


Believe in Me, I'll Believe in You

by Fluffifullness, sinchronicity



Category: IT (1990), IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: 2016 Eddie and 1990 Eddie switch places, Character swap, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fix-It, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 46,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23254537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluffifullness/pseuds/Fluffifullness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinchronicity/pseuds/sinchronicity
Summary: Imagine defeating a killer clown from outer space in 2016 – or was it 1990? – just to blink and find yourself stuck in another Derry, in another year, surrounded by a group of strangers who all have the same names as the friends you’ve known most of your life.Eddie has a hunch that getting back home won’t be as easy as ripping one monster’s heart out; he might have to bare his.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 84
Kudos: 178





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! This fic is going to be co-written by myself (Fluffifullness) and my best friend and roommate bentleys. We’re collaborating on the overall plot, structure, etc., but as far as the prose itself goes, 2016!Eddie and 2016!Richie’s POV sections will always be written by Fluffifullness, while 1990!Eddie and 1990!Richie POV sections will always be written by bentleys. We’ll both still be working on our individual _IT_ fics at the same time as this one, so consider checking us out if you haven’t!
> 
> Also, our title is part of a line from Lewis Carroll's _Through the Looking Glass_.

The Neibolt house sinks into the earth so fast it’s like there’s still something down there sucking it in – _Like a Slurpee up a straw,_ supplies Richie’s voice in Eddie’s head.

 _Down_ a straw, he corrects. Or like Richie shaking himself free of the Deadlights haze, his inhalation so sharp Eddie still wonders how much dust and mold and god knows what else _he’s_ inhaled, in particular. There’s a lot of dust in the air, on their clothes, settling on their faces. Eddie can taste it in the back of his throat with Richie’s hand still closed tight around his wrist. 

He isn’t exactly sure how you’re _supposed_ to feel after narrowly surviving a near-death experience. Maybe he’s just had too many more than the average number of close calls, but still, this is a little different. He came close enough to getting impaled that his chest twinges just thinking about it. 

That aside, though, all Eddie really feels is tired. He’s only as unsettled as anyone is when they leave a place to find that the sun has risen or set since they last saw it. Like he’s just been to the theater and seen a particularly fucked-up movie. He needs time to sit with it.

“All in favor of getting as far from this fuckin’ pothole as possible?” Richie raises his own hand and looks at Eddie first.

Eddie lets the corners of his mouth lift at the same time as his hand – the one Richie isn’t holding, although that slight motion seems to shake Richie out of his own adrenaline-fueled stupor nonetheless. He lets go and looks away without saying anything else.

Eddie kind of wishes he would, but his silence stretches on until they’re all lined up at the quarry. 

It’s funny – Eddie remembers the water being a lot farther down.

Richie turns to him, already toeing off his shoes without bothering to untie them. “Looks nice and brown down there, huh?”

Eddie wrinkles his nose. It’s more green than brown, but it’s definitely murky. At least that much is about how he remembers. 

“How much worse can it be than sewer water?” Beverly offers, like she can tell Eddie’s having second thoughts about jumping in. And then she jumps, way ahead of all of them, and that’s just like old times, too. 

Eddie only lingers because he doesn’t want to land _on top_ of anyone. Dying in a freak swimming accident would be beyond pathetic after the night they’ve had. 

He places his own shoes right beside Richie’s while he waits for a good window to join the others at the bottom. It feels kind of pointless, because they’re already soaked well beyond repair, but he figures it’s probably safer to swim without the added weight.

As he straightens up, he opens his mouth to say something to Richie. _Last one to the bottom’s a rotten egg._ He stops short when he catches the tail end of Richie winking at him, his lips stretched into a toothy smile before he jumps, leaving Eddie alone at the top.

_Guess that makes me the rotten egg._

The water is a little cooler than he remembers, too, but that’s probably just because the sun hasn’t been up long enough to warm it. That, or he’s already coming down with something that probably got in through the massive fucking hole in his face.

“Lighten up, Eds,” Richie says, doggy-paddling over despite the fact that his freakishly long legs can touch bottom at least as well as Eddie’s. Beads of water run down the lenses of his glasses. Eddie tries to remember if he bothered to take them off before he jumped.

“Huh,” he notices when Richie gets a little closer. “Your lens is cracked.”

“He speaks,” Richie intones. “Would you believe me if I told you I have another pair back at the townhouse?”

“No,” Eddie scoffs. “Why would you even say that?”

“Well now I kind of want to insist on it,” Richie responds. He’s stopped right in front of Eddie, close enough that Eddie has to look up at him. “Like, ‘I brought them in three styles, so fuck you.’”

“Beverly would be so proud,” Eddie says flatly. The woman in question doesn’t even turn around at the sound of her name; she’s too busy having a splash war with Ben. “Except you probably don’t even have _one_ more pair back in your ritzy LA mansion.”

“Mansion,” Richie repeats with a laugh. “I’m gonna take that as a compliment.”

Eddie’s tempted to ask what kind of place Richie lives in now, if it’s not the mansion he’s always assumed every showbiz success story owns at least one of. He surprises himself with how much he wants to know, and not just that. When does Richie even find the time to do mundane things like visit an optometrist? Is it the kind of thing his manager takes care of for him?

Just like that, one question swells to ten, and Eddie bites back all of them because _what the fuck._ He can feel Richie’s eyes on him, so of course he meets them with a hard look that cracks the second he registers the sudden shift in Richie’s expression.

“Eds…”

Richie looks as nervous as Eddie suddenly feels, and twice as serious, like he’s wrestling with something that keeps his mouth opening and closing like a fish on a rocky shore. 

Eddie doesn’t know if he wants him to keep talking or shut up, but he thinks dazedly that he never _really_ wants Richie to shut up, and he’s still curious. Hungry enough to eat up just about anything Richie has to say, down to the smallest detail. Anything to help him paint a more complete picture of the life Richie has outside of Derry.

It makes sense – they’ve been apart for so long, and they used to know each other so well. They’re just like old times, too, only a little to the left, and Eddie… hates that.

“Yeah?”

But Richie’s already pulling away, his expression morphing into a wide smile, and Eddie knows even before he says anything that it’s not what he _wanted_ to say. 

“Bet you can’t outswim me with those short little legs of yours.”

Eddie lets out a relieved sigh of his own. _“I_ work out, dipshit. I will _murder_ you.”

“He did always beat you in high school, Rich,” Mike adds. 

“So?” Richie starts to say. “I was all gangly and uncoordinated and shit, like”—

Eddie doesn’t even blink. The world doesn’t tilt or warp or go dark one second and light the next, but his knees buckle and he jolts, feeling for all the world like he did after all-nighters in college, coming within an inch of passing out in class only to snap awake before his head could hit the desk. 

One second, he’s waist-deep in dirty water with his eyes fixed on Richie, and in the same second, he’s scraping his palms up on sticks and gravel, looking out over an entirely different body of water, one that looks less like the quarry and more like a swamp covered in lily pads and lined with tall grass and taller trees. 

In the time it takes Eddie to catch his breath, he registers a chorus of surprised exclamations, questions and, finally, a hand pressed to his shoulder. 

“Uh, who the hell are you and what did you do with Spaghetti Man?”

Eddie smacks the stranger’s hand away and scrambles to his feet. He’s in such a hurry to turn around and get a look at his unexpected company that he nearly topples into the pond; the only thing that stops his fall is the closest man to him, a hulking guy who has to be even taller than Richie – maybe taller than _Mike._

He catches Eddie by the wrist and pulls him back to safety, but there’s nothing friendly about the way he looks at him. 

“Who the fuck are _you?”_ Eddie retorts, snatching his hand back as soon as he’s recovered his balance. 

The man squints at him; Eddie squints at his baggy blue jacket and outdated mustache. The guy looks like he just crawled off the set of a low-budget 90s sitcom. 

“I asked you first!”

Another guy tries to get between the two of them, starting with one leather-clad arm. The woman beside him places a cautioning hand there, her expression tight.

Leather jacket guy gives her a reassuring pat on the back as he looks between Eddie and the outdated asshole who’s still glaring daggers at him. Eddie inches away from the hand he tries to put on his chest. “Hey, just – let’s calm down, alright?” 

“Richie,” yet another guy says in warning. Eddie nearly jumps out of his skin; he hadn’t noticed anyone on the ground with him a second ago, but of course there is someone, a scrawnier man with long hair tied back into a ponytail and an unconscious woman held tight in his arms.

Eddie does a double-take the instant he realizes she’s not unconscious at all. Her eyes are wide open, unblinking and unseeing.

He’s seen that look before.

“Wait,” he says, backtracking. “Wait, wait – you said Richie?” 

Bad mustache guy takes a half-step toward him. “Sorry, bud, you might know me, but I _definitely_ don’t know you.” He pauses with one finger raised toward Eddie’s face; Eddie’s almost tempted to take a bite out of it. “Well, maybe I’ve seen you around, but that doesn’t explain”—

“I have, too,” Leather Jacket says. He eyes Eddie a little more carefully, probably noting how drenched he is compared to the rest of them. He doesn’t even have shoes, or his fucking jacket. “In the Deadlights – Bill, you remember?”

“The Deadlights,” Eddie repeats slowly. “Bill?”

“That’s – that’s me,” the guy on the ground says. “William Denbrough, you might have seen my books at the library?”

_Bill Denbrough?_

“No fucking way,” Eddie snaps. “I _know_ Bill. Next this asshole’s gonna say he’s Richie Tozier, right? Who the fuck are you, actually?”

When no one answers him, Eddie throws up his hands and starts walking into the trees. Either he’s dead and in a soon-to-be very surreal rendition of hell, or he has to find a way out of another clown-induced hallucination and get back to his friends. Whatever the case may be, he wants absolutely no part of _this,_ whatever this is. A gathering of local thirty-something nerds with a raging hard-on for celebrities born in Derry, Maine? Eddie’s seen weirder, but not _much_ weirder.

He makes it a few yards before he’s stopped by another hand on his shoulder. He shakes this one off, too, and only feels a little bad when he sees the woman draw back out of the corner of his eye. 

“Wait,” she insists. “Please.”

“Nope,” Eddie says. “Not real. Not fucking happening.”

“The Deadlights,” she repeats, stopping Eddie short again. He turns reluctantly to see that the whole group of them has followed him into the deeper shadows of the trees, and Eddie is suddenly painfully aware of how hard it’ll be to outrun three people – four, if the bespectacled ponytail guy puts his catatonic friend down.

_Right – because someone who wants to kill you would totally take that kind of care with a woman who looks a lot like Beverly did when she got caught by Pennywise._

_Dammit, Kaspbrak._

“What?”

“You know what they are,” the woman says.

Eddie swallows and nods. “So?”

“We saw you in them,” Leather Jacket starts to tell him. He’s interrupted by Fake Richie, who looks less pissed, now. More placating, or just desperate.

“Just tell us how you managed to appear in a puff of smoke right in front of us and we’ll leave you alone, okay? Is Spaghetti Man just pulling a weirdly elaborate prank, here, or did we not kill that fucking spider as well as we thought? Where did _he_ go?”

“I don’t know how I – who the fuck is ‘Spaghetti Man’ supposed to be?” Eddie says. “And maybe you assholes could tell me where _my_ friends are while we’re at it.”

Fake Richie opens his mouth again – probably not to elaborate on the bizarre nickname he keeps dropping, if his unhelpfulness up to this point is anything to go by – but Wannabe Bill Denbrough beats him to the punch.

“W-what are your friends’ names?”

Eddie glares. As if they don’t already know. “Mike,” he says anyway. “Bev, Ben”—

“…Ben, Bill, Richie, Eddie… Stanley?”

Eddie’s chest aches. “Not – Stan wasn’t there.”

“He’s not here, either,” Fake Richie says, and that’s all he has to say; Eddie feels some of the fight run out of him like blood from an open wound, like the grief is a physical weight on top of the exhaustion he already feels. He does his best not to let it show, but that just feels like a disservice to Stan.

“What about Mike?” he asks, drawing his arms a little tighter around himself. 

“What about Eddie?” Leather Jacket challenges.

Eddie scoffs. “You’re seriously going to list everyone’s names at me and then act like you don’t know mine? What is this?”

 _“You?”_ Fake Richie repeats.

“Yeah, me – Eddie Kaspbrak.”

“Ooookay,” Leather Jacket says. He comes up to stand beside the woman, who’s giving him the same intense once-over her – partner? Husband? – gave him just a few minutes ago. “I’m Ben. Ben Hanscom.”

Eddie takes a step back when he offers him his hand to shake, but it doesn’t seem to faze him.

The woman reaches up to push a few flyaway strands of brown hair back behind her ear. “Beverly Marsh,” she says with a smile.

“Why the fuck not,” Eddie mutters.

“Mike’s in the hospital,” Wannabe Bill supplies. “He was attacked by”—

“Bowers,” Eddie finishes for him. “And I’m supposed to believe _you_ took that guy out?” he adds, glancing back at Not-Richie. 

To Eddie’s surprise, he shakes his head. “Eddie did. _Our_ Eddie, not…” He flutters his hands at Eddie like he’s a particularly disappointing steak. Eddie raises an eyebrow at him. 

“He doesn’t believe us,” Beverly’s impersonator sighs. She locks eyes with him, her eyebrows drawn up in concern. “Can we help somehow?”

“‘Help?’” Fake Richie repeats. “Help _this guy?_ What about the real Eddie? I mean, shouldn’t that take priority here? This guy should be helping _us._ He’s the one who popped up out of nowhere, unannounced! He’s like a rude houseguest from another fucking planet!”

“Just – point me in the direction of Derry,” Eddie says, opting to ignore the loud idiot entirely. If he’s lucky enough to still be on planet Earth, he can put up with being called fake, himself. “Derry, Maine? Look, I don’t know how to help you find… whoever, so just…”

The gaggle of strangers exchange a few uneasy looks. 

“…Don’t even say it,” Eddie groans. “Seriously.”

Leather Jacket Ben frowns at him. “If you were from here, wouldn’t you recognize this spot?”

Eddie glances around. Sure, it’s not like he memorized every square acre of Derry forest even as a kid, but he’d definitely remember a giant pond smack-dab in the middle of it.

“You’re bullshitting me,” he says, broken-record stubborn. He holds out a hand in a universal ‘gimme’ gesture. “Let me see your location then.”

That, maybe more than anything else any of them has said to each other so far, stumps them, and fine – it’s not that Eddie can’t sympathize, but he’s missing all of his friends, not just one, and how hard is it to let him take a peek at Google Maps? 

A thought occurs to him.

“Is there not a signal out here?” he guesses.

“Whoa, there, guy, a signal to what? Your spaceship? You gonna ask Scotty to beam you back up?” Mustache Asshole is looking at him like he’s crazy, which is just… unbelievable. It’s _such_ a simple request, and what good does it do any of them to make a joke of it? 

“A cell signal? You know, GPS tracking? Jeez, what fucking _year_ is it, 1980?”

“Nineteen-ninety,” Ponytail corrects matter-of-factly. He’s in the process of lowering himself and the woman on his back to the ground, and if he weren’t so caught off guard by the answer, Eddie might be kicking himself a little more for not bothering to ask who she’s supposed to be. 

Or if she’s okay. 

“You look a little shell-shocked, there, wanna sit down?” Leather Jacket offers. “What year did you _think_ it was?”

Eddie can’t answer at first, but for the first time since he met these people, he doesn’t shake them off when they try to touch him. Still, it’s definitely for the best that they withdraw as soon as they’ve got him struggling to catch his breath from the relative safety of the leaf-littered forest floor. 

“Asthma?” Fake-Bev guesses. Her hand hovers not far from his back; Eddie finds he trusts her a little more for not coming any closer than that. 

Mustache crouches in front of him. “Don’t you have an inhaler?”

Eddie glares. “Burned it.”

“Seems a little extreme.”

“Fuck you, alright, it was part of the fucking ritual!”

“You did a ritual? For what, summoning demons? Kidnapping strangers who were just minding their own business?”

“Did you fight It too?” Ponytail – Bill, _maybe –_ wonders. He looks weirdly hopeful about it. “You just… did it a different way?”

“Come on, Bill, how could he have done it? We did it! We _just_ did it!”

Eddie would kill to be asleep. Or awake, as the case may be.

“We did,” he says, “I did. With my friends, in 2016.” 

_In a Derry that looked_ nothing _like this back in 1990._

“And you killed It too?”

Eddie nods. It really seems like too much to hope that one of these people will have an abrupt _eureka_ moment and explain to him in simple, easy steps how to wake up or… _un_ teleport. He’d even settle for just understanding what’s going on. 

All he gets is a theory from the stranger who calls herself Beverly.

“Maybe it has something to do with the Deadlights,” she suggests, looking at him like she expects him to have an informed opinion about that.

“I never got caught in them.”

“But we did,” Leather Jacket says, gesturing at himself, Mustache and Ponytail, who holds the woman in his arms a little tighter in response. “And like I said before, we saw you in them.”

“In a cave,” Ponytailed Bill supplies. “Throwing something.”

“…The fence spike?”

“Looked like a spear,” Mustache says. “Went into the mouth of the world’s ugliest crocodile. Ring any bells?”

Eddie pauses. Unlike the names of his ultra-famous best friends – or, hell, even what they _look_ like, which is, in a word, _nothing like these assholes_ – a little detail like that isn’t the kind of thing you can just Google to fuck with someone. He crosses his arms, uncrosses them, stuffs his hands into his lap and mulls that over. If Bev remembered seeing anything like _this_ back in 1989, he’d like to think she would have said so, even if it doesn’t hold a candle to also seeing all their deaths.

He wonders what Richie saw. Just enough to get Eddie out of the line of fire?

He would have said something if he’d thought Eddie was about to be flung 26 years into the past, wouldn’t he?

“I think we broke him,” this year’s dime-store version of Richie says. God, Eddie hates his fucking mustache.

“I’m thinking,” he retorts. “If I’m here, and you’re… _maybe_ who you say you are, then do you think the guy you know, who has my name…”

“Might be with your friends?” Ben’s not-so-identical twin says.

“Like a swap,” alt-Beverly says. “You switched places?”

“So switch back,” Mustache demands. 

“Don’t you think I would if I could?!”

“Maybe Mike will know how,” this Bill suggests. Before Eddie can get too excited about that possibility, the smile falls off of his face and he carefully repositions the woman in his arms so that her limp head is better supported against his shoulder. “Maybe he’ll know what to do for Audra, too.”

“Audra Phillips? Audra as in Bill’s – _your –_ wife, Audra?” 

Bill just nods miserably. 

“You brought her with you?” Eddie wonders. _“Here?”_

“I didn’t. She followed – god, she followed me. This wasn’t supposed to happen, either.”

Oh. More differences, Eddie thinks. Feeling like enough of an asshole already, he lets himself push his luck just one more time before he gets himself punched in the face or abandoned in the middle of the woods.

“She got caught too, right?”

“Longer than the rest of us,” Ben confirms quietly. “It wasn’t his fault.”

“No, I know,” Eddie shakes his head. “Look, you probably… know this already, but did you try, uh, kissing her?”

Another round of bewildered stares. _Seriously?_

Before Eddie can say anything else, Bill lowers his head to press his lips to Audra’s. Nothing happens for long enough that his expression has time to shift from hopeful to crestfallen, but then she draws the same gasping breath Beverly and Richie both did, like coming up for air after too long spent underwater, complete with jerking upright so fast she inadvertently headbutts her husband. 

“Oh my god,” she breathes when they’ve both recovered from the impact enough to get a good look at each other. “Bill, what…”

Jesus, she’s _British?_ Somehow, Eddie thinks Richie – _his_ Richie, not this mustachioed douchebag – would have had a field day with that. Probably would have wanted to try his British Guy out on her for some expert feedback, in which case, well – hopefully he’s gotten better at it than he was when they were kids.

“Thank you,” Bill cries. He has his very confused wife wrapped up in another hug, but now that it’s actually being reciprocated, Eddie suspects that his first impression of this new, different version of Bill was probably a lot bleaker than it should have been. 

Richie – _or whoever,_ Eddie can’t help but tack on – looks, if anything, _more_ petulant than he did before. How he manages that while also offering Bill and co. a genuinely relieved smile, Eddie isn’t sure, but clearly he doesn’t want anyone’s opinion about this newcomer to change just because he had one piece of good advice to offer.

Fine. Eddie doesn’t exactly expect any in return.

He lets the couple have their moment while he forces himself back to his feet. Walking anywhere is going to be fucking horrible with only socks to protect him from rocks and broken glass, so he might as well brace himself for it now.

It’s only then that it occurs to him he might have a problem finding himself a replacement pair of shoes, let alone a place to sleep off the night’s activities. Because he’d had the good sense and lack of foresight to take that shit out of his pockets before he went trekking through the sewers and swimming in gross water, he has no phone, no wallet, just the slowly-drying shirt on his back. 

“So,” a voice interrupts his worrying. Eddie has to look to see who it is: Ben, giving him yet another appraising look. Eddie wants to tell him to mind his own business and keep his eyes to himself, but then where the hell will he be – stranded somewhere no one knows him, with no way at all to prove his identity or take care of his basic needs?

“Do you think you can manage a quick stop at the hospital before we head back to the inn? Kinda seems like you should get that looked at.”

He taps his own left cheek to illustrate his point.

The decision is hard, but not _that_ hard; there are only two things Eddie wants more than a shower and clean change of clothes, assuming those things are included in the promise of an inn, and that’s, a) to avoid death by sepsis and b) to get the hell back to _his_ Derry and _his_ friends.

On both counts, this Derry’s hospital and the version of Mike that’s apparently waiting for them there are his best and _only_ bet.

-*-

“Like a baby deer or a stick insect or whaaaat the fuck.” 

There’s words and noise, but Eddie doesn’t actually hear them. The first outside sensation Eddie registers is _cold_ , because he is very cold all of a sudden, even before _wet_ , which he also is. One second he’s got his feet planted on solid ground, Richie at his side, and the next he’s – he’s not got any of that at all.

“What –?” Eddie says, or at least he tries to say it. He tries to say something; to say anything at all.

“Eddie?” There’s someone saying his name, but he doesn’t recognize the voice; and why do they sound so terrified, even angry? 

“Eddie! Fuck! Where is—”

“Oh, God—” 

“ _Eddie!_ ” 

The voice multiplies; turns into voices, plural. Eddie curls into himself; his head pounding with a budding headache; his breath starting to catch in short gasps. He’s submerged from the waist down; trousers, socks, everything – entirely soaked through. It’s very uncomfortable; he tries to move but his boots have sunk into the mud and he can’t fucking budge them, and it’s horrible.

“H-hey man, are you okay?” 

He is not okay. _I am not okay!_ Eddie thinks. There is no part of this that is _okay_ or _alright_ ; not when he’s standing, waist deep, in cold muddy water. He wants to cry, or scream, but – mostly he just wants to breathe.

“What the fuck happened? Eddie?” The voices are all around him and they sound – they sound like they _should_ sound familiar, but they don’t. They’re talking to him like they know him, but they don’t; they can’t. They definitely don’t, because – somehow – somehow even though Eddie thought everything was over, everything was done, he’s – been taken, transported, somewhere. 

It’s _wet_ and that’s still all he can think about, and he’d been prepared for unpleasantness when he entered the sewers, but this is – it’s not right, it’s not what he expected, and – 

“Eds?” 

_Who?_

“Richie, what the fuck?” And that – oh, that – _Richie_ –

“Richie?” Eddie says. Because he knows Richie. He _always_ knows Richie. 

“Holy-fuckin’-shit,” the man in front of him says, succintly. Eddie manages to blink up at him through tired eyes. He’s got messy dark hair and glasses, and he’s taller than Eddie but his posture is sort of hunched-over, almost shy.

“Richie?” All of apparently-Richie’s friends say – except that maybe it is _their_ friends? Maybe what’s happening is some impossible alternate universe, like in Star Trek? 

“Eddie,” Richie – he _guesses_ that’s Richie, because who the Hell else could it be – says. “You’re Eddie. Hol-ie shit. You’re Eddie, aren’t you?” 

Eddie is focusing on trying to breathe, and it’s taking – it’s taking more effort than he thought it would, that’s all. 

“Eds?” Again with that! With whatever nickname that is – it’s – well – suddenly and very keenly, so deeply it cuts through the terror and confusion, he misses Richie, because he just got him _back_ , dammit, and –

The real Richie. _His_ Richie. He wants to be called ‘Spaghetti Man,’ even though it’s stupid as all-Hell, because, because he thought he was going to die under Derry, and he really had wanted to tell Richie something –

Eddie gasps for breath.

“Someone _help_ him!” Comes a stranger’s voice again. Eddie hopes, vaguely, that someone will _listen_ to him.

“Yeah, I’m fuckin’ _trying_ ,” Richie says, and then there’s hands on Eddie’s shoulders. He squeezes his eyes tight-shut and he tries – really he tries – to breathe and to be calm and focus on the hurt of now, not the possibilities of later – little techniques he’s learned from self-help therapy books.

He doesn’t have his aspirator. He used it to help kill the Spider, and now he’s defenseless.

“But it’s _dead_ ,” Eddie says, when he finally manages to be calm long enough to breath out some words. “We killed it.” 

“Oh my God –” a woman’s voice, high and scared and not sounding really anything at all like Beverly’s voice, but when he looks up at her, at the red hair slicked back by dirty water, at her wide, pale, face, he thinks – _It could be. It could be her._

“Where am I?” Eddie says, and he means it to be demanding, but his voice is pitched high, a little scratchy, so it doesn’t come out that way really. “Right now,” he tries again. “Where am I!”

“Hey, man, calm down,” one of the other men says, wading towards Eddie with his arms raised in placatingly. “You’re in…” he pauses. Thinking over what to say. “You’re in Derry, Maine. Where do you _think_ you are?”

Eddie can’t help it, he starts laughing, enough though there’s still tears squeezing out of the corners of his eyes. “I _think_ I was in Derry, Maine! And I’m not anymore! But how did you – we killed It, God I swear we did”—

“It?” the man says. “Did you hear –” He’s close now, very close, looking like he wants to reach out and touch Eddie, but he’s scared to. 

So Eddie says it, as clear as he can manage with anxiety’s vice-grip around his throat, with his ribs still aching from where the beast had got a hold of him, “My name is Eddie Kaspbrak. I think you know who that is.”

“Eddie?” The woman says. Eddie wants to reach over, instinctively, to the two men standing by her, and Eddie puts the pieces together easily enough. _Bill, Mike, Beverly._ Ben, trying to talk him down. Richie, wearing his glasses like when he was a kid and looking – looking about as bad as Eddie feels.

“Something went wrong,” Eddie says. Hell, this really is like every sci-fi comic he and Richie used to read. “It was supposed to be over!” He’s angry, so angry, and he feels a tear finally manage to slip its way down his cheek. 

“Another Eddie,” Beverly says, and she steps closer to him. “Oh, God, do you think that Eddie –” She gets right up close to Eddie, but then she pulls back, just like Ben had.

“Do you –” she says, suddenly awkward.

“I know you,” Eddie says, and he raises a dirty-wet hand to wipe at his face, and tries not to think about how gross that is. “Beverly.”

“Holy shit,” Mike says, behind her, as Beverly raises one hand to cover her mouth.

“You too, Mike,” Eddie says, but he chokes on Mike’s name, and then he’s back to cry-laughing.

“What the fuck, man,” Richie says. “How’s this – is Eddie okay?” 

“I was with you,” Eddie says, because he has absolutely no idea how to answer that. “I was...with Richie and everyone, except Mike’s in the hospital”—

“Mike’s in the hospital?” Bill says, alarmed, glancing over at this new Mike, and both of them step forward. Eddie’s starting to feel a little crowded, but he can’t move; if he tries to move he’ll collapse. 

“Henry Bowers attacked him,” Eddie says, as if that isn’t an absurd thing to say to strangers. As if this entire situation makes a single lick of sense. 

Mike and Bill share a wide-eyed look. “It’s the s-same,” Bill says. “It’s...how is this possible?”

“Alternate realities,” Mike says. “Shit. I always thought...I mean we just messed around with something way bigger than any of us. Maybe it unbalanced the universe...or the timeline, at least –”

“How the _fuck_ are you all being so calm about this?” At that, Eddie looks over at Richie, and so does everyone else. Richie’s still a little hunched over, and he’s...he’s shaking. Eddie thinks of Richie – his Richie, the proper Richie – snapping and arguing and so scared underneath, and he almost steps forward, but – this isn’t the Richie he knows. So he doesn’t.

“Rich, we have no reason to think Eddie is in danger,” Beverly says. 

“Yeah,” Bill adds. “He and…” Bill gestures vaguely at Eddie. “You know, this Eddie, probably switched places. He’s s-still with us, just...another us…”

“I know, I fucking saw it! But like – switch them _back!_ ” 

“How am I supposed to do that, Richie?” Bill says, just as Beverly says “Wait, you _saw_ –” and everyone stares at Richie again. 

“Yeah,” Richie says. “I...you know. Fuck! When I was...floated. Or whatever. I saw shit, like Bev did, I guess.” 

They’re all stepping closer to Richie, now. Eddie watches, quiet and scared and curious.

“Richie, why didn’t you say anything?” Bev says.

“‘Cause I didn’t think it was _real!_ I saw all sorts of shit, Bev!”

“Me too! And some of it was pretty relevant to this situation!”

“Well, okay, sorry for not sharing with the class! I was just a little _stressed,_ and I only saw flashes and I saw Eddie die! Okay, Beverly? I saw him fucking die, and that’s how I knew to push him out of the way!” 

Eddie stays quiet, because Richie looks like he’s about to cry, and because he’s thinking about how when It dropped him, and he fell, Richie was there to catch him. He’s been thinking of it ever since, of Richie’s arms under him and around him; how Richie was able to carry him and set him down, and how he ran his hands over Eddie to make sure he was alright.

_“You good, Spaghetti Man?” Richie said, his hands gentle on Eddie’s chest and sides, and it hurt because everything had hurt and he couldn’t breathe. “Hey, you’re good,” Richie had said like he realized Eddie was panicking and couldn’t get a single gasping breath in._

_“I got you,” Richie said like it was a promise or a prayer. “You fucking saved us, Eddie, I –” and maybe he was going to say thank you or maybe he was going to say something else, but that’s when Beverly had said, “It’s not dead yet,” in this deep and serious voice and she was right, of course she was right, so they had to turn and follow her and Bill and kill the Evil of Derry once and for all._

_But before they had, Richie had looked at him, just – really looked, and handed him his glasses that he had folded-up in one hand. Eddie took them, his fingers curling over the delicate frames._

_“Richie,” he had said. “Thank you.”_

_Richie hadn’t said anything in return, but his steady gaze hadn’t left Eddie’s eyes, and that was something, at least._

“Oh,” Beverly says. “Oh, Richie, shit, I’m sorry –”

“No, it’s – it’s fine –” Richie points at Eddie and Eddie is forced back into the truth that he exists now in this strange universe. “I saw him. I just didn’t know he was Eddie.” And as he says it, he turns towards Eddie and he takes a step forward. Then another step. He’s so close now, close enough to touch, and Eddie is still paralyzed. 

“I am,” Eddie says, because he doesn’t – he doesn’t know what else to say; he has no way to _prove_ it, but – “Rich, I’m Eddie.” 

“You called me ‘Rich,’” Richie says. He raises a hand towards Eddie, but midway towards touch, he drops it. “I guess we’re friends in your world, too.” 

Eddie’s heart is beating fast, so fast. But he can still breathe. In fact he feels – vibrant; alive. “Of course. Richie, of course we’re friends.” How could Richie ever doubt that? 

“This is fucking crazy,” Beverly says, and that snaps Eddie back to reality. This Beverly is very foul-mouthed. He actually finds it kind of charming. “Rich, I understand why you didn’t say anything –”

“I _said_ I didn’t know –”

“Yeah I _get_ it – just –” Beverly gestures at him, and Eddie does not know what to do. 

“Fuck!” she says, eventually, and honestly? Eddie thinks that about sums it up. 

“Can we,” Eddie starts to say, and then everyone stares at him, so he staggers to a halt. “Uh,” he says, eventually. “Can we...get out of the water?” 

There’s a beat of silence as everyone continues to stare at him. It’s awkward as all-Hell. 

Then, Richie laughs. It’s a sweet, genuine sound. “Yeah, Eds, ‘course we can.” Then: “Shit, is it okay if I call you Eds? Sorry, I –” 

“It’s fine,” Eddie says. He doesn’t know why he says it. He picks at Richie so much for his nicknames, but this new man just seems so… sad. He seems sad and Eddie is terrified and alone and he wants – he wants to be gentle and friendly to this new Richie. He _has_ to. 

Eddie takes a step forward. He stumbles a little on the uneven mud, and Beverly and Richie both lean in to grab his arms. He laughs, overwhelmed and so-scared and just happy to be alive.

“We got you, Eddie,” Beverly says, and absurdly, he almost believes her. He’s not sure why, but then – maybe he does know. These are the Losers, after all. If anyone can get through this, it’s probably them.

It’s sort of a beautiful view. There’s certainly nothing like it in the Derry that Eddie knows; they’re standing high over a quarry; sunlight glinting off the water below, and it doesn’t look as dirty as it is when you’re this far away. He can’t blame the Losers – the alternate Losers – for coming here, after everything. He’d want – he _does_ want, right now – to see some beauty, too. 

He looks at the sign that prohibits swimming and diving, and he can’t blame them for ignoring that, either. Their shoes and jackets are all bundled up in the dirt beside the bars trying to protect the good people of Derry, and Eddie can’t stop looking at the blood and dirt on their things; objective proof of the risks these people took. They really are his Losers, even if they aren’t the same. He watches as they all lean over, gathering their clothing into their hands, preparing to return to real life. He watches Bill pull a bloodied flannel over his t-shirt and Beverly slip wet shoes onto wetter feet. Richie’s now layered up with another shirt and a jacket, but he’s holding a separate bundle in his hands, one that must belong to the other Eddie. No one says anything about it. It’s not like it’s Eddie’s fault, but he feels weird and almost guilty, for standing in their friend’s place. 

There’s someone else missing too, though, and he hasn’t said anything about it until now, but –

“Bill,” he says, “I – I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but – where’s Audra?”  
That gets funny looks from the whole crew. 

“Audra?” Bill says, and Eddie has a scary moment when he thinks he’s totally miscalculated everything, and maybe he doesn’t know these strangers at all.

“Uh,” Eddie says. “Your wife?” 

“Yeah,” Bill says, clearly baffled. “My wife. Why would she be here?”

 _Oh._ Well, okay then. “I’m sorry,” Eddie says, awkwardly. “In my – uh – universe she was here. She got taken by It.”

Bill, to his credit, looks absolutely horrified at the thought. “God no,” he says. “Audra is safe, in California. She doesn’t even know where I am, beyond Maine.” 

“Oh,” Eddie says, and actually, it’s a relief to know that she’s safe and not trapped in some… bad ending; some ending where the protagonist doesn’t get the girl. Because Bill is the protagonist, right? He’s always sort of been. “Oh, I’m really glad, Bill.” 

“Is she… that Audra, is she…?” 

Eddie shakes his head. “We got her out with us, but she was… I’m sorry, Bill, she was catatonic. Maybe if we just get her to a hospital she’ll be okay, though. It was the Deadlights. She saw too much.” 

“The Deadlights?” Beverly says. There’s a definite anxiety in her voice, and Eddie remembers in the chaos of his first moments here, they were talking about seeing things, too. And if a lot things are the same –

“Well, obviously I’m not catatonic,” Richie says to Beverly. “Maybe his universe is different. And you were fine, all the way back when.” 

“Yeah,” Beverly says, watching Richie closely. “…Fine.” 

Eddie’s beleaguered mind tries to piece some things together. “Beverly, you got caught in the Deadlights? As a _kid?_ And Richie, did you face it _alone?_ ” 

“What?” Both of them say simultaneously, clearly lost in whatever spiral they’re headed down. 

Then, Richie laughs. “Of course I didn’t face the clown alone, what the hell, that’d be crazy! Don’t tell me I had some big-damn-hero moment in your universe?” He sidles closer to Eddie while he says it.

“No,” Eddie says. Everyone’s looking at him and he feels his face flushing a little. “Uh, I guess not.” It’d felt pretty fairy-tale, though, when Eddie was falling and he’d thought he was going to die but then Richie caught him. That probably didn’t happen, in this version of things.

“You and Bill and Ben all looked into the Deadlights,” he tries to explain. “I think because you were together, and because Bill is so strong, you were able to fare better than Audra.” 

Beverly looks pointedly at Richie again. “So maybe we _should_ get this one checked out, huh?” 

“Meh,” Richie says. “I’m literally fine. Mike over there is totally getting an infection on that cut, like, as we speak, though, so if you wanna insist on a hospital visit we should make it a team field trip.” 

“That’s not a bad idea,” Bill says. “We can all go.” 

Mike nods, obligingly, but he’s still looking at Eddie in particular. “I’m just curious,” he says, eventually, as Ben and Beverly lead the group down the path that presumably will take them back into town. “Your Ben, Bill, and Richie were all in the Deadlights, and your Mike was injured. So you and Bev…” he pauses pointedly. 

“I didn’t know what to do,” Eddie says, quietly. He’s still sort of embarrassed about the whole thing, but – at least he did _something_. He tried, dammit. “I used my aspirator to hold It off, while Beverly went behind and attacked it. She hurt it bad enough that it dropped everyone.” 

“Holy shit!” Richie says, laughing; he’s stopped walking and is turned fully to face them. “What the fuck? Why wouldn’t you lead with that, man, it’s badass!” 

“I didn’t do anything,” Eddie says, knowing his ears are going pink but unable to stop it. “It didn’t even work. I just gave Beverly time to do something better.” 

“Hmm,” Richie says. “Well. If you’re anything like the Eddie I know, I bet you did more than you think.” After he says that, Richie turns back around and keeps walking, and Eddie is tired and wet and scared, so he doesn’t say anything; he just follows them down into the unknown.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We were both really surprised by the response our first chapter got! Thank you to everyone who's read and commented, it really means a lot! (Also, we apologize for the long wait between chapters; we're both considered essential workers during this pandemic and haven't had as much time to write as we would like!)

This guy is not Eddie Kaspbrak. Like, presumably he is – at least he fuckin’ claims to be – but he doesn’t _feel_ like it, not to Richie, and _no offense_ , but he would know. He’s known Eddie for a million years, since they were both snotty little kids, and sure he forgot, but – he still knows him. He _does._ Maybe he wasn’t quite sure at first, but then there were all of those playful moments; his hands in Eddie’s hair, and _yeah_ he knew that Eddie was still. His, you know, friend. His fellow Loser. Whatever.

But the point is that this new man also calls himself Eddie Kaspbrak, and maybe that’s even true. Richie doesn’t _just_ read sci fi in pulp mags; he reads the actual science stuff, too. He knows about theories of multiverses, or at least he’s heard of them. And besides, it’d be awfully bold of him to rule out magic as a factor considering – y’know. Considering everything. 

But it’s hard. Like, for his brain, it’s _hard._ This guy just isn’t anything _like_ Eddie, is the thing. Maybe he has some...Eddie-adjacent traits. He’s Eddie-esque, if you will. But he certainly ain’t any version of Spaghetti Man that Richie recognizes, and Richie would like to think he knows Eddie’s hidden depths. At least some of them. Again and again, he keeps thinking of that little kid with a pouty face and hair that flopped limply over his forehead, and the guy in front of him sure as Hell isn’t that kid. He’s got these big ol’ doe eyes but he’s as mean as a viper. Honestly, Richie would be kind of into the dichotomy there, except that this _isn’t_ the Trek episode with two Captain Kirks, it’s the one where Kirk beams away and is replaced by a guy with major anger issues. Richie eyes the new Eddie with some curiosity. At least he probably really is just from the alt-future, and isn’t a space fascist?

“What?” Not-Eddie says, touchy, his voice coiled-up and snappy. “The fuck are you looking at?” 

“Fucking nothing, man, chill,” Richie says, his eyes rolling in their sockets against his will. He hadn’t meant to actually stare. “Jeez-us.”

“Pardon _me,_ ” Eddie says, through clenched teeth that are really Too Much – “if I insist on any sort of safety precautions! Fuck! I know 1990 was a Goddamn mess, but like –” 

“Oh, fuck off,” Richie says. He literally does not care that Eddie has insisted on seat-belts. It had not even crossed his mind, because, well, he’s a little distracted. The jab at the year bugs him, though, more than he’d expect. He’s not particularly fond of 1990 as a year in his life, but he’s oddly defensive – of his time, of his existence. “I’m the one who has to fucking live in it, man.” 

“Yeah,” Fake Spaghetti snaps. “Except I do too, now, _again,_ and I’d _really_ like to keep living!”

“I’m sure you have a lot to go back to,” Richie says, the sarcasm obvious in his tone. Vaguely, he wonders if what Eddie had said about himself is true of this guy, too. He’s certainly got a bunch of pent-up shit, so it wouldn’t be like, surprising. 

The new Eddie Kaspbrak says nothing. He’s so quiet, in fact, that Richie looks back over at him. He’s frowning, and it’s pulling his whole face down, tugging at the bloodied dirty bandage taped over his cheek. _Oooh-kay then._

Richie mulls over something comforting to say. Everyone is busy in their own heads with their own worries, and they’ve left it up to him to care for Falseghetti. Which is… fine. He can do that. 

“Hey,” he says eventually. “We’ll get ya back, okay? I want my proper Eddie, anyway.” 

“I’m sure he’s absolutely fucking pining away for you, too,” new Eddie says, but there’s no venom in it. His eyes glance vaguely in Richie’s direction and then away. Richie doesn’t respond; he just hums a little and stretches his arms up and behind his head. He’s not really sure where this is going, but he’ll wait it out. If this is Eddie – and it does seem that he _is_ Eddie, whether Richie likes that or not – he may as well get used to it. 

The hospital is kind of a bust. Richie acknowledges that it was definitely a good call to get Eddie 2.0’s face cleaned up, and they’ve done that, so now everyone’s just loitering outside Mike’s hospital room waiting for Bill and Audra to get back from Audra’s check-up so they can all go in together. He’s been listening to Eddie-the-Second bitch about his wet jeans and sock feet for what feels like twenty fuckin’ years. 

“He Who Is Not Spaghetti Man,” Richie says, looming towards Eddie, “Please, calm thyself. After talking to our esteemed colleague Michael, we shall return to the illustrious Derry Inn, and _get you some fucking shoes_ , okay?”

Eddie blinks wordlessly for a moment at him. Finally he manages, “What the _fuck_ was that accent?”

Richie shrugs. “Dunno. It doesn’t have a name.”

“It doesn’t have a – fuck. Who am I kidding? _Of course_ they have names!” Eddie 2.0 tosses his arms up in the air in defeat, and Richie would take that as a win, except he doesn’t stop talking, so, it’s not much of one. “And do _not_ tell me you seriously call him ‘Spaghetti Man’?”

“What’s wrong with Spaghetti Man? It’s funny.”

“It’s fucking stupid! You’re forty years old!”

Richie laughs. “So are you, man! What’s he call you, then, Edster? The Richie that is apparently so much better than yours truly.”

“Not _Edster,_ ” Eddie-but-mean says. “That’s for damn sure. Look, new rule, okay? No nicknames.” 

Well, at least he’s hilarious. If they’re gonna be stuck with him for who knows how long, at least Richie’ll get a laugh or two out of it.

“You’ve been calling me ‘Fake Richie’ for the past two hours, man.”

“Well what _else_ am I going to call you?”

Richie shrugs as dramatically and pointedly as he can. “I don’t know, dude. Maybe my name?”

Eddie stares at him. He’s got a very impressive stare. “Richie?” He says, pronouncing the word like he’s never heard it before.

“That’s the man.” Then to show he can play nice, he adds, “Eddie.” 

For a moment they just look at each other. Eddie has his arms crossed tightly over his chest, and Richie does feel a _little_ bad that he’s been wandering around in sock feet. Richie sort of tips his head towards him, because this is the moment where usually he’d ruffle Eddie’s hair or something but he’s pretty sure if he tried that now this dude would literally bite his fingers clean off. Eddie doesn’t crack a smile, but he frowns in a calmer sort of way. Richie’ll take it. Glancing around at Ben and Bev – who have apparently decided to just let them duke it out – he offers them an awkward ‘what-can-ya-do?’ expression. He’s luckily saved from further action by Bill and wifey’s triumphant return. 

Speaking of the couple, Bill-and-Audra is weird. Audra’s pretty and English and well-spoken and Bill is like, an average-looking American man with a ponytail. As an average-looking American man with a mustache, Richie isn’t gonna judge, but it’s a stunning indictment of heterosexuality. Or maybe Bill’s just really good in bed – Oh, that’s gross to think about. Richie brushes the thought away, wincing.

“Is everything good, Bill?” Ben says. “Mrs. Denbrough?” He adds, politely. _Ew._

Luckily for Richie’s sanity, that just makes Audra laugh. “Oh, please, we’re all friends here, right? Just call me Audra. I’m so sorry we missed being properly introduced.” She sticks her hand out and makes an only-slightly-awkward circle through all of them. When she gets to Eddie, he stares at her for a long moment.

“Sorry,” he mutters, eventually, shaking her hand. “Uh. Eddie Kaspbrak.” 

Audra smiles at him, and Richie glances over their heads at Bill. Good luck selling _that_ one. Bill mostly just looks tired, which is fair.

After being assured of Audra’s continued well-being – the docs couldn’t find a single thing wrong with her, apparently – the merry band traipses into Mike’s room. He’s well enough now that they’re all allowed in at once, even if the nurse seems highly disapproving. Richie winks at her and her scowl deepens. Ah, well. Can’t charm ‘em all. 

It’s Bill who takes the lead, though, just like it was Bill who went in to see him before. Mike’s propped up in bed with tubes in his nose, which is scary, but he’s looking up at Bill with something resembling awe on his face.

“My God,” he says, and his voice is a little scratchy. “You – you did it.” It’s not a question.

“Yeah,” Bill answers, softly, “w-we did.” 

A tear tracks down Mike’s face; it makes Richie suck a breath in. He’d really wanted to cry after everything, after he saw Eddie fall and caught him instead. He hadn’t, though. He’s not much of a crier. 

“Oh, Hell, Bill,” Mike says. “I wish Stan was here to see this.” Another tear joins the first, and Mike’s eyes drift ‘round the room. Audra gets only mild surprise, but Eddie – 

“Where’s Eddie?” Mike says, very urgently. 

If only this were a comedy sitcom instead of a fucking horror story. Here’s where Eddie pops back in, right? _I’m right here Mike! Did ya miss me?_ Oh, but even in his head that seems like a dirty clown trick instead of anything good. 

No one seems to want to explain. Audra looks perplexed, which is funny. 

“Yeah, so,” Richie says, stepping forward. Mike’s piercing gaze shifts to him. “About that! It’s a good thing you’re laying down already, Mike. ‘Cause, uh… Eddie’s right here.” 

As he says it, he grips Eddie by the upper arm and pulls him gently forward. He has surprisingly impressive biceps.

Eddie is, for once, silent.

“What?” Mike says, all sleepy-drugged confusion.

“We don’t know what happened, Mike,” Beverly says, gently. She sits lightly on the side of Mike’s bed, and takes his hand up in hers. “We all got out – we killed It and we all got out. It was...it was a miracle, I guess,” she says like she wasn’t the one to shoot the damn spider where it hurt. “We got out of its lair, we were standing by the lake. It was beautiful. But then Eddie –” she looks away from Mike and up at the rest of them, then, at a loss for words. 

Richie looks at Eddie, who’s staring at Mike with a desperate intensity. He doesn’t know what to say, either. 

Ben comes to Bev’s rescue because of course he does. “It just happened out of nowhere, Mike,” he says. “You should’ve seen it! One minute we were with Eddie, the next minute, this other guy was standing in his place. Except that this guy says he’s Eddie, too, and he knows different versions of all of us. Like an alternate universe or something.” 

Mike’s throat works for a moment, his face blank as he works to contemplate this new hurdle. Eventually he just says, “Really?” 

It’s Eddie himself who answers that. “Yeah,” he says. “Hi, Mike. I’m Eddie Kaspbrak, and I’m really hoping you might be able to help me get back home.” He pauses. “Also,” he adds, sort of wincingly. “Home is 2016. So, uh. There’s that.” 

They all just sort of sit there, then, and let poor wide-eyed Mike try and process all of that. It’s not that funny, but Richie kind of just wants to laugh, and laugh, and never stop laughing long enough to actually get worried. 

Things get awkward, serious, and tense, and Richie hates all of those things so he retreats. He does not explicitly say, _Bye, I gotta go hide in the bathroom because you guys are talking like real Eddie might not come back_ , but it is what he’s thinking. There’s nothing even _in_ his stomach to throw up, and yet. And yet! 

The shitty old Derry hospital is still kind of shitty and old despite the new machines, and Richie is just kind of wandering, vaguely, hands in his pockets and trying to look casual. There’s a sign above the corridor that seems to indicate that there could, potentially, exist a little boy’s room down that way, but when Richie makes the turn, he sees a whole lotta nothin’; just a long stretch of white walls.

He blinks at the walls, warily. They’re _really_ white, too-white; not the beige or blue-ish shit that’s everywhere else in this place. And the lights are _bright._ Up ahead, a door opens, and a man steps out.

 _Oh, fuck,_ Richie’s brain says, because it’s _Eddie._

The real Eddie, he means. Eddie looks tired; his hair plastered to his forehead awkwardly with water or sweat, and he’s not wearing his jacket. He’s holding a little paper water cup in one hand, the sort that you’d get in a waiting room.

Richie opens his mouth to say something, but before he can even shape his lips around the first syllable of ‘ _Spaghetti’_ , Eddie turns towards him, and his eyes widen; the paper cup slips out of his hands and falls towards the floor. His mouth opens, too.

Richie blinks. He literally just blinks, that’s all, and then when he opens his eyes again, Eddie’s gone. _Oh, fuck_ , indeed. The lighting’s changed, too, and he sees that there _is_ a restroom down the way.

Richie swallows. He swallows again. He blinks a few more times, and bites his lower lip, hard. Crying is stupid, and pointless, and he’s either losing his goddamn mind or he just saw a really fuckin’ important clue. 

Richie washes his face in the bathroom and slaps himself roughly on the cheek a few times, because again, crying is pointless. Then he sucks it up and wanders back to the Losers. 

“Miss me?” He tries, in the doorway of Mike’s room. When he steps in, Audra’s gone, it’s just Mike and Beverly chatting quietly while Ben and Eddie sit in separate chairs; Bill beside the bed flipping through what looks to be one of Mike’s notebooks. Eddie makes him smile; he’s not sat in the chair so much as perched upon it.

“Richie!” Beverly says, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Mizz Marsh, why wouldn’t I be?” Richie says, deciding the best course of action is to play dumb. Beverly lets it slide, which he’s grateful for. 

“Where’s the wife?” Richie asks Bill in a convenient conversational shift. 

“At the Inn,” Bill says, looking up. “She’s tired, and scared, and she never even… m-met Eddie. So.” 

“Yeah,” Richie says. “Fair enough. Well. Anyway.” He pauses, and tries to think of something else to say. He fails. “Uh, on that topic, I may have or may not have seen Eddie.” 

Everyone just kind of looks at him, including Eddie 2.0. 

“I mean, like,” Richie waves an extravagant hand in Eddie’s direction. “Regular Eddie. Spaghetti Man.” 

“Our Eddie?” Mike says, and sits up in bed fast enough that it looks like it hurts. 

“Yeah,” Richie says. “Uh. It was kind of like...a vision, or like I saw a ghost, so maybe I’ve just finally cracked, but – it was like the whole corridor changed, like I was seeing…” Uncharacteristically, he struggles for words. “I don’t know. Like I was seeing where he was, too.” 

Eddie 2.0 stands up from his chair, like he’s overcome with energy. The look he’s giving Richie is _intense_ , but Richie tries to return it in kind. 

“What did it look like?” Eddie says. “The hospital.”

Richie shrugs. “Didn’t see much. He was just in the hallway, so I didn’t see any crazy future tech. It was bright, though. Really bright lights and too-white walls.” 

Eddie chews his lip. Then he heaves a sigh. “I’ve never actually been in Derry General as an adult,” he says. “I guess I don’t know any more than you what it looks like. But that sounds like modern hospitals.”

Modern. Right. Richie really doesn’t know what to say. 

“I think it was him,” is what Richie lets out, eventually. “I think I really saw him. And he saw me.” _That’s something, right? It’s gotta be._ He thinks but does not say. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, surprising just about everyone. “I – uh. Fuck. I saw my Richie, too.” 

Everyone’s stares shift focus very quickly.

“What?” Eddie says, irritable. 

“Explain, dude,” Richie says. He means it to come out gentler than it does. Oh well. 

“I saw him,” Eddie says, the scowl on his face scarier than most things Pennywise ever tried. “In the hospital too, I think, because he was clearly being examined by someone, but – he saw me, I saw him, then he was gone.”

Richie swallows. So, it’s the same.

“It was awful,” Eddie says. “I couldn’t even talk to him.”

That’s the most vulnerable thing New Eddie’s said yet, by a longshot. Richie wants to be vulnerable in return, but he’s got no idea how.

“Yeah,” he says, eventually. “I couldn’t either. But you saw him, though.” He says what he’s thinking. “He’s safe.”

“Yeah,” Eddie allows, even though his eyes are still burning a hole in Richie’s head. “He is. I guess.”

“You guess?” 

“He was –” Eddie breaks off. “Fuck!” he says, after a long pause. “He was getting examined, you know? I’m just worried.” 

Doesn’t sound like much, _just worried_ , but maybe Richie’s a little concerned too because there’s a scary hardness to Eddie’s stance and to Eddie’s everything; he doesn't know what to do if the other man gets all closed-up on him again, not when they need him functional.

“Eddie,” Beverly tries, “I’m sure he’s fine –”

“But you don’t fucking _know_ that,” Eddie says, and yeah, there’s definitely the aggression there that Richie feared. “Do you?”  
They _don’t_. Eddie’s right. 

“He was by himself,” Eddie says, tightly. “He – I was here, in Mike’s room, when he saw me, but he didn’t have anyone with him –“ Eddie drops off the sentence and shrugs, helplessly, like he knows the situation is broken but has no idea how to fix it. 

“Yeah?” Beverly prompts, gently.

“I need him to be okay,” Eddie says. “You – you don’t get it. I _need_ him to be okay. Alright?” 

“Of course, Eddie,” Beverly says, but Eddie cuts her off, seemingly enraged by her gentle tone.

“Yeah! Of course! Because he’s my friend and I don’t even _know_ you people!” As he gets more animated, his hands fly into the air, making angry, expressive movements. “God! This is so fucked up – I should be there with him. I could, I could – I –” Eddie cuts himself off, his hands still at eye level. 

Richie’s been chewing his lip for the whole conversation, but he can’t let it sit forever. He tilts his head in Eddie’s direction. “You can’t do anything from here, new-Eddie.” 

“Fuck off! I know!” 

“I’m just saying. Ya gotta relax, man. The other Losers will take care of him. We didn’t just leave _you_ out to dry, did we? You really think so little of your friends?” 

Eddie blinks up at him, but eventually his hands drop. He crosses his arms tensely over his chest. “Of course not. I mean – he’s in the hospital…”

“There you go,” Richie says. Fuck, he’s tired. He wants this over with, and he wants to sleep for at least a solid ten hours. “Anyway, we don’t know that there’s even anything wrong with him. If he got stuck in the Deadlights, like, me too, and all I feel is that I could use a nap. And also a shower.”

Eddie sighs. “I don’t think it’s the same.” He looks at Bill with a piercing intensity, presumably thinking of Audra. 

“Well shit, Bill’s wife is A-okay too.” Richie shoves his hands into his jacket pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels. It’s all starting to hit at once; the exhaustion and the grossness of the dried sweat and sewer-muck on him. He can see it in his friends’ eyes when he looks around. Ben looks half-asleep in his little plastic chair, and Bill’s not even pretending to still be looking at Mike’s journal. 

Eddie runs a nervous hand over his face. “Yeah,” he says, eventually, and the anger has gone from his voice. (Richie thinks he’s starting to get it – that Eddie gets mad and snappy, but he can’t hold the intensity of the feeling for long. It’s sort of how he remembers Eddie being as a child, honestly.) 

“And yeah,” Eddie says, again. “I really don’t want to be wearing this shit for a minute longer.” He gives a harsh little almost-laugh.

“Alright,” Bill says, softly, and everyone turns to see him stand up. “Back to the Inn, then. We can shower and sleep and regroup.” He makes an aborted move towards Eddie, like he wants to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder or something, but then thinks better of it. Good call. 

He turns back towards Mike instead, grasping the other man’s hand tightly before letting go. “Back soon, Mikey,” he says, voice fond. “Rest up.” 

Mike nods and gives them all a tired smile, and Richie wants to make some sort of gag as they file out of the door, but he can’t think of a single goddamn joke. He’s all out. Such an occurrence has, occasionally, been known to happen. 

-*-

Derry General emerges from between neat rows of trees – a mostly unsuccessful attempt at making its grounds look less austere and better funded – without Richie having quite managed to stop clinging to Eddie’s jacket and shoes. It’s probably a bad sign for his sleep-deprived brain that he’s started debating the likelihood that they might be able to swing some kind of summoning ritual using these things as a medium.

 _Maybe if we stick them in a tub of water they’ll grow into you,_ he thinks a little desperately, _like those dinosaur growing capsules, those sponges?_

If Eddie were here, he’d have something to say about that theory. _You make it sound so idyllic for something that would actually be really fucking disturbing to look at._

And that wouldn’t help them put _this_ Eddie back where he belongs, anyway. 

“Hey,” Richie says, like, _Hey! I just had this idea this very moment and definitely didn’t waste any time actually_ thinking _about it!_

He nudges Bill’s knee out of the way of the seatback pocket in front of him and digs out Eddie’s phone and wallet, plus his own – _“Come on, Richie, it’s going to be literally disgusting down there, just leave it” –_ and Bill’s raised eyebrow says all there is to say about how little Eddie would approve of anyone touching his things with unwashed sewer hands.

Or of Richie casually lending them out to some guy just because he has the same name.

 _Then he can pop up right here, right now, and say something about it himself,_ Richie thinks.

“Guessing yours is either long-gone or irreparably water damaged,” he actually _says_ . As he’s passing Eddie’s phone to Eddie, Kind Of, the screen lights up, and Richie catches a glimpse of a missed-call notification, a number somewhere in the double digits – 23? 33? – and _–Kaspbrak._

He doesn’t even have a real wallpaper, Richie can’t help but notice. It’s one of those default ones, just a starry sky, and Richie doesn’t know why, exactly, but that saddens him a little more than the thought of Eddie’s wife blowing up his phone more and more desperately without ever getting any response from him.

“Sooooo you might as well borrow our Eddie’s shit while you’re here.”

“What is this?” this Eddie wonders. Richie’s never seen anyone hold a phone the way this guy does; he full-on clamps his hand around the top of it and doesn’t readjust even after Richie’s reluctantly released his own grip on it.

“Eddie’s phone,” Richie says again, eyeing it a little nervously. “Not gonna say he wouldn’t mind if you borrow it, but it’s almost like it’s yours, anyway, so…” He hopes that’ll be enough to ensure that Eddie’s double takes really good care of it for as long as he has it.

“Oh,” Eddie says, a little surprised. He turns it over in his hand. Richie meets Beverly’s eyes up front as Mike pulls them into an open parking spot by the emergency entrance. 

Beverly, who graciously offered to make the great personal sacrifice of sharing the front passenger seat with Ben so Bill, Richie and Eddie could take the back. 

He can guess they’re both starting to wonder the same thing, and then of course blonde, bespectacled Eddie looks up from the device and asks, “I’m sorry, but how do I… open it?”

Jesus, he’s literally trying to find hinges on the thing like it’s a goddamn flip phone.

Bill reaches over and shows him the power button – for all the good it’ll do, considering that none of them knows the passcode and this Eddie’s fingerprints probably aren’t any more identical to their Eddie’s than any other part of him is. But hell, at least it can make emergency calls and show him what time it is.

He and Bev climb out, followed by Ben and Mike. 

“Alright, who’s gonna ask?” Richie says. Inside, Bill is patiently, if a bit perplexedly, explaining the concept of a touch screen.

“Hey, Eddie?” Ben begins delicately once they’re all on their merry way inside. It’s an easy agreement to reach in perfect silence; he’s bound to be the best of them at breaking difficult news. “Can I ask what year you think… uh, what year it is in your Derry?”

Eddie, to his credit, looks a little apprehensive when he says, “It’s 1990.”

Ben nods slowly. “Okay. So you’ve probably noticed some things are pretty different around here, right?”

“A little,” Eddie says, eyeing the phone in his hand. “Your clothes, and – well, and this. Why? What year is it here?”

“It’s 2016, dude,” Richie says, and then because he can’t help it, “Our Eddie must be so pissed right now.”

Pissed or scared out of his mind. Richie can’t think of anything worse than having to relive some of those years, but then, he has his own reasons for that.

“Twenty-sixteen,” Eddie repeats, a little breathlessly. “Oh. Okay.”

“Well, look at it this way,” Mike offers, his enthusiasm noticeably forced. “You get to see how much better medicine’s going to get in twenty-six years, right?”

“And how much more expensive,” Richie snarks.

Eddie offers them both a strained smile, and that’s _all._ There’s no expository retort about the top ten best ways to reduce an E.R. price tag, no playful suggestion that they steal a few choice drugs on their way out just to ensure they get their money’s worth, not even a ‘you got that right’ snort.

They get checked in and then stiffly hunker down for the inevitable wait. Richie doesn’t expect them to call him back as quickly as they do, and that’s still something like twenty minutes after Mike disappears with Bill in tow.

Richie’s clothes could probably stand up by themselves; getting up to follow the nurse who’s come to collect him feels like crawling out from under a thin sheet of ice. He’s surprised that the motion isn’t accompanied by a sharp _crack._

Instead, there’s the rustle of similarly damp and dirty clothing as Eddie gets up to follow him.

He stops dead when he realizes Richie is staring and not moving.

“Oh,” he says, glancing around like he doesn’t remember standing up. “I just…”

“Uh,” Richie mutters. “I mean, Mike _did_ promise you a chance to see what it’s like around here?”

It’s not exactly an invitation, or Eddie just doesn’t want to tag along badly enough to interpret it as one. He hovers in place, his long, slender fingers tugging uneasily at wet fabric. 

“I can stay here if you’d prefer,” he hedges.

“It’s up to you.”

“I don’t want to impose,” Eddie adds. “But – well, Mike has Bill with him. I thought…”

Before Richie can come back with another unhelpful ‘whatever you want’ type answer, Beverly leans forward to give the corner of Eddie’s coat a light tug. She keeps her grip there until Eddie returns to his seat.

“I’ll just keep him,” she announces decisively. “We can chat, and _you,”_ she says to Richie, “can go by yourself.”

The _and you’d better make sure they cover all the bases_ is implied.

Ben and Eddie give him twin looks of wide-eyed concern-bordering-on-guilt, but Richie’s not gonna be the one to break up their waiting room party.

“I’ll be on my best behavior,” he promises, finally turning to let the harried-looking nurse lead him off to some exam room.

Behind him, Ben calls, “But if you need anything, call us, okay?”

“Sure thing, Benny!”

The “exam room” turns out to just be a curtained-off corner of a bigger room-slash-hallway. Richie tries to peek around some of the pale green drapes in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Mike or Bill, but to no avail. He can’t even hear them over every other voice, beep, hum and clatter of metal.

If he actually had a serious head injury, the noise would probably be driving him crazy.

After asking him a few questions – “So, tell me about what happened,” “Are you experiencing any pain?” and so on and so forth – the nurse leaves him in a vinyl-padded chair that somehow manages to be _less_ comfortable than the ones in the waiting room.

True to Derry form, the space directly across from him is unoccupied, curtains wide open and exam table prepped for its next hapless occupant, should they ever bother to put one there.

That occupant arrives a lot more suddenly than Richie could have expected, like the Wicked Witch of the West with less smoke and more… weirdly outdated medical equipment? There’s an adjustable lamp that looks remarkably like the one Richie’s dad used to have in his office – probably still does – and a literal radiator beside the bed where before there wasn’t anything. The curtains have changed from green to pastel blue. It’s kind of like a movie projection of a flat wall on the curtains; if Richie really _looks,_ he can still see what he was seeing a second ago.

He stops trying to look when he recognizes one of the people gathered around the bed.

Someone must have fixed up his cheek; the rest of him is still just as dirty as Richie himself, but the bandage on the left side of his face is fresh. 

Richie springs to his feet. The clatter of his own flimsy metal chair hitting linoleum drowns out Eddie’s name, but there must be something even louder than that competing with him for Eddie’s attention, because he doesn’t turn to meet Richie’s eyes. He doesn’t seem to be looking at _anything,_ except maybe his hands in his lap. He’s hunched over them; Richie can see the tension in his jaw and the way he’s not fully on the chair at all.

He thinks, distantly, that all that teeth-clenching must be pulling uncomfortably at Eddie’s stab wound.

Eddie is so still that Richie’s eyes are drawn to the flutter of tree leaves visible through blinds half-covering a window that wasn’t there a moment ago – and then, to the man in the bed.

He’s _talking,_ Richie realizes. He’s talking to the brunette who’s sitting beside him on the blankets. Richie just can’t _hear_ it, or the dry rasp of pages turning as the man across from her flips through a book with a blank cover. 

He takes a step forward, almost into Eddie’s line of sight, and Eddie jolts upright. He turns more fully toward Richie, and his eyes go wide. 

Richie watches Eddie’s mouth form the shape of his name – _Rich—_ He watches him stand and pick his foot up – still absent the shoes that are now sitting in Mike’s car outside – to meet Richie in the middle.

He watches him vanish as suddenly as if he’d never been there at all. No blue walls or blankets, no bedridden patient and no Eddie. 

“Mr. Tozier?”

Richie whirls around and finds himself face-to-face with a dark-haired woman whose name tag identifies her as a doctor. She gives him a long, wary look before glancing at the still-empty space across from where he was presumably supposed to be waiting for her. Richie takes an instinctive step back toward his overturned chair but doesn’t bend down to pick it up yet.

“Is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. It’s Jade of the Orient all over again, except this time he doesn’t have the convenient excuse of a murderous space clown to fall back on, and a doctor sent to evaluate him for a concussion is going to want an actual explanation for whatever the hell it looked like he was just doing.

The fact that his phone is still tucked away in his pocket makes the excuse of a call less than believable, so Richie falls back on an even lamer one. “I thought I heard my friend,” he says. “Disgustingly tall, has a pretty nasty gash on his arm?”

The doctor – Melissa Harris, according to her name tag – looks unconvinced, although whether that’s because she doesn’t think he’s serious about Mike or not, he can’t tell. Richie almost wishes she’d actually call him on it, but instead she gestures coolly at the exam room and closes the curtain behind them while Richie rights his chair as casually as possible.

She asks him all the same questions the nurse did, and then she runs him through a whole gamut of tests, patiently explaining the purpose of most of them even after Richie stops asking.

The whole thing takes forever and culminates with a questionnaire that almost makes Richie laugh out loud. It seems like a good sign even before the doctor politely comes back to inform him that there’s no evidence of traumatic brain injury and that they can order an MRI or CT scan “out of an abundance of caution,” but that she feels “reasonably comfortable” sending him home with a friend who can check in on him from time to time.

“With injuries like this, it can take a while for symptoms to manifest,” she explains. “So if you notice anything strange over the next twenty-four hours or so, don’t hesitate to come back here.”

She lists a few examples: balance or memory problems, nausea, shortened attention span—

“I don’t think that could get any shorter if it tried,” Richie tells her, grinning wide. 

That earns him a forced pity laugh, which Richie takes to mean he’s at least forgiven for hallucinating too loudly in Dr. Harris’s understaffed ER. He takes the printout she hands him before he heads out. Even without Eds around to worry about him, he figures Beverly might still want to see physical proof that he didn’t just spend the last hour or more smoking on the roof. 

He finds Ben and Bev waiting with Bill and Mike, which seems unfair; Mike was _actually_ hurt and his thing still went faster? Richie would complain about that, but he can’t resist letting the first words out of his mouth be, “So, the good news is I’m _probably_ not psychotic.”

There’s no Eddie in sight, blonde or otherwise; he must have wandered off to explore their brave new world. Richie probably would, too, if he woke up in the 2040s.

“What?” Ben wonders. “Why would you be?”

“You mean apart from everything we’ve seen in the past… forty-eight hours?” Bill says. He still raises an eyebrow at Richie. “So, they didn’t find anything wrong?”

“Nothing that wasn’t already – no,” Richie clumsily interrupts himself. “And you know you’re probably fine if no one wants to try to get more money out of you by running a bunch of fancy brain scans, right?”

Beverly doesn’t look entirely satisfied, so Richie spreads his hands palm-up and says, “Come on, if _I’m_ fucked up, Eddie Mark II is probably twice as bad. Can modern science explain what _time traveling_ does to your brain?”

Speak of the visitor from another dimension – no sooner have those words left Richie’s mouth than the slap of his dorky rain boots alerts them all to his return. 

“Guys,” he gasps, and whoa, he’s not just out of breath; he looks like he’s seen a ghost.

That’s probably a little too convenient to be a coincidence.

“What’s wrong?” Beverly is the first to leap to her feet. Fortunately, most people in an ER waiting room have bigger things to worry about than a group of worked up forty-somethings, or Bill and Mike would probably be herding them out the door right now. 

“You saw something,” Mike guesses. “Something bad?”

 _“No,”_ Eddie says with surprising force. “I saw Richie. I saw him in Derry. In _our_ Derry, in the hospital.”

“You mean you switched places again?” Ben says hopefully. “With our Eddie?”

“No,” Eddie repeats. “No – I don’t know. I only saw him. Richie.”

Beverly is also the first to notice Richie’s hands make tight fists around his papers. Bless her heart, she doesn’t actually say anything about it, but her searching look is enough of a cue by itself.

“Uh,” Richie says, addressing Eddie instead. “Yeah, I don’t think you two switched places, unless there’s actually three of you running around. Derry General ain’t much, but it doesn’t look as fuckin’ antique as what I saw.”

If that offends Eddie, he doesn’t let it show.

“You mean, y-you saw Eddie,” Bill says slowly.

“But you saw him somewhere else?” Bev clarifies.

“Yeah, well. Would you believe they got him to go to a fucking hospital without shoes on? Your friends are in for an earful,” Richie laughs. _Danger, Will Robinson –_ his eyes are starting to burn with the threat of tears. Working around an increasingly tight throat, he adds, “He saw me, too. We couldn’t hear each other. He was too far away.”

“Twenty-six years far,” Eddie says glumly. Or just sympathetically, maybe. Richie can’t get a very good read on this guy. “I think my Richie tried to call me, too. I couldn’t hear well enough to be sure.”

“What were each of you doing when this happened?” Ben asks.

 _“Yes,”_ Mike agrees, gesturing approvingly at him. “If we can figure out what opened up a – a connection, or something, we might be able to recreate it intentionally.”

Richie exchanges a look with Eddie. He looks a little calmer, at least, but his eyes are still puppy-dog wide behind his glasses. He could almost give their Eddie a run for his money. It takes some of the edge off, treating this less like a failure to bridge a gap and more like a place to start.

Except… “I wasn’t doing anything. Literally, I was just sitting waiting for a doctor. And Eds, he was with – uh, Mike, probably? You mentioned he was in the hospital, right?”

Eddie nods. “Did he look okay?”

“For a guy in a hospital bed, I guess,” Richie says. “But, Mike, what are we supposed to do with that?”

“Well… were you thinking about him?”

 _Play dumb, Will Robinson._ “Bold of you to assume I think.”

“I was,” Eddie says easily. “But I wasn’t doing anything, either. Just walking. We were both in a hallway. But I _know_ it was the hospital. I would recognize it.”

Richie considers what _his_ Eddie must have seen looming up behind him. A bunch of scary-looking machines, an exam table, and Richie still dressed in the same filthy clothes he’s been wearing since yesterday. Jesus. He wishes he could send a telegraph his way. _I’m fine, by the way, our friends are just worrywarts._

“So they’re in the same place, kind of,” Mike muses. “That could mean something.”

“I think so, too,” Eddie says. “But what do we…?”

Beverly sighs. Beside her, Ben yawns. “Well, if I know Eddie, I’d say he’s probably wanting a shower and a clean pair of shoes right about now. If we’re done here, maybe we can think about heading back to the townhouse?”

Eddie smiles, although the concern doesn’t quite fade from his features. “I do want that.”

Richie has to admit they’re probably right, but that doesn’t mean it _feels_ right. He kind of wants to tear up every floorboard and off-white linoleum tile in this place in the hopes that it’ll help him catch another glimpse of his best friend. Maybe if he asks really nicely, they’ll even call him via intercom, like malls do for lost kids’ parents. 

“C’mon, Rich,” Ben says. “We can’t fix this while we’re all running on fumes.”

“Fine,” he relents, mostly because Eddie is looking at him again, and it’s obvious how exhausted he is. They _all_ are. “But I reserve the right to wake you all up with an airhorn if you’re not up and at ‘em first thing in the morning.”

-*-

Sleep really does a body good, and Richie’s feeling nearly-cheerful and certainly well-rested. He’s hopeful, even! Amusingly, their time apart has apparently not calmed Spaghetti 2.0 in the slightest. 

“I don’t see why you can’t just wear his shoes,” Ben is saying. He says it in a gentle, friendly tone, but it’s obvious to anyone who’s listening and who knows him that he’s annoyed. Personally, Richie is finding it pretty fuckin’ funny. 

“Because,” Eddie says, like he’s explaining things to a two-year-old, “they aren’t _mine_ , and they do not fit me.”

“Just shove a sock into the toes,” Richie suggests, mostly because he knows it’ll piss Eddie off. It does.

“Richie?” Eddie says.

“Yeah?” Richie says, trying not to grin too obviously.

“Go fuck yourself!” Eddie hisses, and Richie laughs out loud. This guy really is fuckin’ great.

“No, really,” Eddie says, and his eyes are wide, his eyebrows pressed together. His lips are so thin it looks like he doesn’t have any to begin with. “I don’t want to wear someone else’s shoes! Look, I don’t have money right now, but I can use his, because he’s probably using mine –” 

“Okay, hold up, no one’s using Spaghetti’s money –”

“We switched places! It’s _my_ money! I want new fucking clothes!” 

“Uh,” Ben says, awkwardly attempting to step between them. “You’re pretty close in size to Bill, maybe you could –” 

“Fuck that,” Eddie says, with more passion than Richie necessarily sees as crucial. “I’m not wearing his fucking clothes, okay? Is it so crazy to not want to wear another man’s shit?” 

“We don’t think you’re crazy, Eddie,” Ben says, gently. “It’s okay, you can –” 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, grimacing. “I fuckin’ _can!_ ”

And honestly, there was no real argument there, so – that’s that. The Losers’ Club can go clothes shopping. _How hard can that be?_ Richie thinks, and then grins to himself, because there really are so many ways this can actually go terribly wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **bentleys:** If anyone wants to be clown town pals, my twitter is [@gracklesknow](https://www.twitter.com/gracklesknow/)!
> 
>  **Fluffifullness:** And if anyone would like to follow me on social media, I am not (active) on Twitter, but [I do have a tumblr!](https://fluffifullness.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo, this took a bit, but in our defense, this chapter is over 16k words long! Also, we added a chapter estimate (6 for now), but that's subject to change! This fic isn't meant to be wildly long!
> 
>  _Also,_ an internalized homophobia tag has been added to this fic; we just wanna put out a general warning that it'll be an ongoing theme for the rest of the fic. (Unsurprisingly.)

As inter-universe discrepancies go, the Derry Inn is far from the worst Eddie has had to deal with. It doesn’t have the conveniently unguarded bar, but the communal lounge space more than makes up for that; it looks cozy, inviting enough that Eddie can almost picture the Losers Club – this one _and_ his own – all sprawled out in it. There are blankets, for one thing, and the whole ground floor actually smells _less_ like the ghosts of cigarettes past, which is a definite plus. There’s an impressive fireplace taking up a good portion of one wall. _That_ seems like a bit of a fire hazard, albeit one Eddie will only find the energy to worry about if and when someone tries to light it.

The shared anachronisms – right down to the wall radiators in the bathrooms – probably say more about their own Derry Townhouse than they do about this place. After all, it’s still 1990 here. The Townhouse doesn’t have that excuse.

Eddie’s ruminating goes mostly unnoticed while his acquaintances clumsily lie their way into getting him a spare key to the other Eddie’s room. The whole scene leaves Eddie feeling frustratingly useless, but as Bill points out, the lady manning the front desk isn’t about to grant a stranger she’s never seen before access to another guest’s room.

Ironically, his relief at finding himself alone in a space that isn’t “his own,” per se, but as close to it as he’s going to get for now is short-lived, and it’s more or less because it isn’t different _enough._

“Fuck.” Even the bathtub is the same, with one small but incredibly crucial difference – there’s no toothpaste-green shower curtain, because there’s no fucking _shower._ Eddie still finds himself scanning the floor in front of the tub for lingering bloodstains, but there are none. The towel rack isn’t on the floor where he left it. The window is closed. And the colorful linoleum tiles decorating these walls are pink, not green. 

He still resolves to spend as little time in here as possible, a decision reinforced by the presence of a stranger’s pill bottles in the medicine cabinet and a stranger’s toothbrush by the sink and, _shit,_ he forgot to ask them to stop at a drugstore on the way back here.

At least his alt-universe counterpart had the good sense to also pack mouthwash; Eddie tosses it back glumly, careful to avoid actually letting his lips touch plastic, and then he spends so long in the bath – drained and refilled twice because _ugh –_ that the bathroom becomes a veritable sauna.

He does _not_ open the window to air it out.

He _does_ try to find clothes that fit him, and then, failing that, to find something that’s marginally better than sleeping naked on unwashed sheets. It’s slim pickings.

He’s surprised this guy doesn’t sleep in silk pajamas, but then again, maybe that’d be too comfortable. One thing’s for sure; no matter what Eddie does, he’s going to look like an idiot trying to wear any of this tomorrow. Sweater-vests, button-ups, tailored pants, fucking _garter socks?_

If any of these clothes were less dapper, Eddie would look less like he ordered them online – or out of a catalogue, whatever the fuck overdressed adults did in the early 90s – without bothering to check the sizes or take his measurements. You know, like an idiot. Like a kid playing dress-up with the shit even his grandpa wouldn’t touch.

Clearly, the only thing he and the other Eddie Kaspbrak have in common are a name and a hometown. 

_And the pills in the cabinet._

Eddie’s sleep is restless, plagued by tense nightmares. Decades of having to rely on people who only know him as a cheap replica of someone they actually care about. Richie drawn, pale, hollow-eyed in a hospital bed. Long, lonely years. 

He doesn’t wake up in 2016 and he’s still dressed in baby-blue pajama pants that have managed to uncuff themselves over the course of the night, creating a renewed tripping hazard that nearly has Eddie eating shit first thing in the morning. He tears off the matching shirt when he sees himself in the bathroom mirror and replaces it with a too-small tank-top undershirt _thing_ that digs uncomfortably into his armpits. It looks just as bad; add to that the sheer gross-out factor of wearing some asshole’s socks – which he only does because it’s one step above walking across a dirty hotel floor with nothing on his feet at all – and he’s back to being in the same dark mood he was in when they got here. He might as well have not slept at all.

The morning’s one and only saving grace is Beverly’s offer to let Eddie stay behind at the Inn while they go buy him a few basic necessities. Even _he_ wouldn’t have asked to be waited on like that right on the heels of a heated argument about this extremely minor detail, so it’s… nice. It’s an olive branch he takes more than a little sheepishly. 

He can’t help but think, though, that _his_ Bev wouldn’t have made that offer unless she thought it’d be fun. Actually – as part of a weak attempt to smooth things over and not seem like a total asshole, he tries asking if Bev is a fashion designer in this universe, too.

She’s more excited than he expected her to be about that tidbit of information. “I am! And what about you, Eddie, do you also run a limousine company?”

“Do I – does he… do that?”

“Huh,” Ben comments, mildly surprised. “Yeah, he mentioned it. So what do you do?”

Well, now he’s kind of embarrassed to say. Richie’s gonna have a laugh about that – his Richie, and this Richie, too – because driving celebrities and corporate bigwigs around? Looking after cars? That’s _interesting._ You can make conversation about things like that.

“I’m a risk analyst,” he says, trying to hold himself in a way that exudes confidence these clothes don’t make him feel. He _feels_ like a comic relief character in a bad buddy comedy. “For insurance companies.”

“That sounds like a blast and a half,” Asshole Richie says immediately. 

“That’s a big difference.” Beverly mulls that over for a moment. “What about the rest of us?”

Why does this feel like salt in his wounds? “Uh… Ben’s an architect”—

“Yeah,” Ben agrees. “Pretty good one, too.”

Eddie forces himself not to make a comment about how out of character the gloating would be for _his_ Ben. “Richie’s a comedian. Stand-up.” It feels like it’d be too much of a dick move to tell these people that he only performs what other people write, somehow, so he stops there. This world’s Richie grins triumphantly.

“Funny in every universe. Sounds right to me.”

“You both think you’re a lot funnier than you are,” Eddie retorts. “And Richie is funnier than”— _Okay, maybe don’t go out of your way to insult the guy who just agreed to help do your shopping for you._ “…Never mind. I think we already established that Bill’s a writer. Mike works at the library, and”—

And Stan… Eddie realizes he doesn’t _know._ He can’t even guess. 

“All the same,” Ben agrees, politely ignoring the obvious omission. “We should compare notes when we get back. It’s pretty crazy to think about.”

“Bill could have a field day with that stuff,” Richie interjects. “Are any of you serial killers in your universe? You can tell us – how would we report you?”

Eddie doesn’t deign to take that bait, and Richie _for fucking once_ lets it go. The fact that there’s an apparent limit to how much he’ll intentionally needle Eddie is almost reassuring. It’s not the _worst_ note to end this interaction on; after the door swings shut behind the three of them, Eddie wanders back up to wait in the privacy of his counterpart’s room feeling a little better already.

-*-

“I couldn’t find you sock garters, man, sorry,” Richie says, grinning. Eddie’s been in his own thoughts – thinking of a lot of things; his mother a little bit and his friends a lot, and – and _Richie._ Seeing Richie in that hallway just off the waiting room. Richie’s mouth had moved and Eddie’s nervous hands had flexed and spilled his little water cup. He just _can’t_ stop thinking about it. Richie had looked scared and tired and upset and Eddie wants to know that he’s okay, and he wants Richie to know that _he’s_ okay, too. Just in case Richie’s worried. 

This Richie is certainly worried. He’s trying to hide it beneath layers of forced cheer but it’s pretty obvious. If even Eddie notices, Richie’s actual friends definitely do. 

“Oh, shit,” Richie says when Eddie doesn’t answer fast enough. “You like, actually do wear garters, don’t you?” 

“It would ruin the line of the suit leg if my socks were all bunched-up around my ankle,” Eddie says, reasonably.

“Holy shit,” Richie says, laughing. “Man. You are…” he seems to rethink the rest of his sentence. “Uh. You’re just pretty different from our regular Eddie.” 

Eddie’s aware. He’s wearing borrowed clothes right now, although he’s still got his own trousers even though they’re disgusting, because no one else is really close to his pant size. He’s wearing one of the other Eddie’s t-shirts, and his jacket, which he feels weird about. The shirt fits well enough, but the jacket was clearly tailored to the other man’s measurements, and the arm sleeves don’t quite reach Eddie’s wrists. He keeps struggling not to pull on them. Eddie’s clothes were foreign to look at. _Lots_ of t-shirts, in plain, neutral colors; plus polo shirts and a distinct lack of undershirts. He has casual clothes, almost exclusively; jeans and soft jackets; though some of the jackets at least had collars on them. 

Eddie supposes there’s no real reason to bring your nicest suits on a trip to your hometown, but he still feels basically naked without a shirt buttoned up to his neck.

Last night, sleeping in the other Eddie's bed with his mysterious future phone lighting up on the desk beside him, Eddie had found himself crying in bed, quietly terrified.

“Richie, thank you,” he says, trying to let his voice show how truly grateful he is. 

“No problemo, Eddie 2.0. This is scary shit. Even if you are in the cool and sexy future.”

“Sexy?” Eddie says, amused.

“Well, maybe not. Disappointed not to see me in a see-through space suit, Eddie?” 

Eddie laughs, even though he tucks his head away a little too, because he can feel his face heating up. 

“God, that’s what gets a laugh out of you, huh?” When he raises his eyes, Richie’s smiling at him. “You’re an easier audience than the Eddie I’m used to.” 

“I think we’re...really different,” Eddie says. He’s thinking of Eddie’s depressing closet and his flashing telephone. “I guess that’s pretty weird for you.”

“Weirder for you, man,” Richie says, but when Eddie meets his eyes he frowns and then shrugs. “Yeah. But then this whole fuckin’ place is weird, right? Fucking Derry.” 

In the future, everyone swears a lot. Eddie chews his lip. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“What’s up?” Richie says. He switches almost immediately into what Eddie figures is his Serious Mode, setting the newly purchased clothing down on the bed. 

Eddie picks up Eddie’s telephone and holds it towards Richie in the way he watched Bill do before, trying not to cover the screen with his fingers. The little light in the corner is still blinking. 

“All last night the screen was flashing on and off,” Eddie explains. “And now there’s still a little light there. Does that mean he’s getting messages?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. He sits on the bed, and rubs a hand over his face. “Ugh, fuck. _Lots_ of messages.” He takes the phone gently from Eddie’s hand and taps the home button, swiping something down and peering at it.

“I thought it was locked?”

“Oh, it is, I’m just looking at the message previews...it doesn’t matter. God, this is a lot, I hope it didn’t keep you up.”

“No,” Eddie says. It was not the sci-fi that made it hard to sleep. “Um,” he says, and then hesitates. Is this too personal? It’s about himself, but actually, it isn’t. 

“Is it his mom?” He says in a rush, trying to get it out fast. “My – our – you know. Sending all the messages?”

Richie stops rubbing at his forehead and looks up at him, mouth open in surprise. Eddie shifts, nervously. “Fuck, of course not, she’s dead – ohh shit. Eddie, I –” 

He reacts as soon as Eddie goes pale and still, and Eddie manages to say, “Ma’s dead?” Even though he knows it’s not _his_ mom. 

“Fuck! Uh, this version of Sonia Kaspbrak passed away years ago, Eddie. I’m really sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” Eddie says. He has to sit down on the bed beside Richie, though. His mind is swirling. He tries hard not to think about his mom dying, for all sorts of reasons. Eventually he recovers enough to ask. “So who –?” 

“On the phone?” Richie’s watching him closely. He can tell. “I’m gonna guess it’s his wife.”

 _Fuck!_ Eddie’s mind says. Outwardly, he does not say anything. He clenches his hands into tight fists, then releases them.

Because there it is. He had maybe suspected it before, but here’s a huge insurmountable evidence that Eddie is _not_ the man these people know. And he never will be.

“...I’m guessing from your reaction that you’re not married?” Richie says, gently. 

Eddie shakes his head. He wonders if Richie knows why; if he’s guessed. Sometimes, he thinks everything about him is obvious to everyone who sees him. 

“No, I –” he doesn’t know what to say. He already tried to tell _his_ Losers a version of the truth; he’s not sure he can manage another round. So instead he offers his shame up to Richie on a plate: “No, I still...I live with my mom.” 

Richie looks surprised by that, even though he tries not to show it. Eddie’s embarrassment deepens. He doesn’t fantasize about being heterosexual, but he does sometimes fantasize about being...normal. About being able to leave.

“Shit, man, I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” Eddie says, again, even though it’s never been okay. “I mean, it’s my mom, right?” 

The two of them are sitting beside each other on the bed, but there’s an odd space between them. Eddie wishes it was 1990 and he was talking to his Richie, who’d make a stupid joke right now, or maybe not even that. He’d loop his arm around Eddie’s neck and he’d _touch_ him. Since Beverly and Richie helped him in the water, no one has touched him; they’ve been careful not to. With a sudden and rising certainty, he realizes that he might cry again like he did last night. He bites down hard on his tongue and inner cheek until the urge passes. 

“What’s her name?” He says. “Eddie’s wife.”

It takes a long time for Richie to answer. Eventually, he just says, “Myra.” 

Eddie looks over at Richie. He’s looking down very intently at the phone still gripped in his hands. 

“What’s she like?” Eddie tries.

“Never met her,” Richie says tersely, and that’s that, apparently, because Richie puts the phone down, and makes some deeply awkward and largely unfunny jokes, and he leaves. Once he’s gone, Eddie feels even more alone and more adrift than he did when he – switched dimensions, or whatever that was. That says something about him, and he knows it’s nothing good. He sighs and folds his glasses up in one hand, setting them on the table where the future-man’s telephone rests once again. 

-*-

Eddie answers the knock at his door with barely restrained excitement. His hair is still wet from his second bath (or is it technically his fourth?) in less than twenty-four hours, and it’s bothering him more than he’d like to admit that he had to put the same uncomfortable clothes on afterward. 

If the clothes he’s presented with didn’t still have new price tags on them, he’d have a hard time believing they didn’t find them in a thrift store whose inventory hadn’t turned over in a solid ten years _at least._

“Wh – uh.” He has to remind himself several times not to be a dick about this, but it’s hard, because the last thing he wants to wear is a vintage tie and sweater vest. And fucking _loafers._ They might fit better, but they won’t _suit_ him, no matter how pleased Beverly looks with the selection – and it’s a lot more of a selection than he expected, or _needed._ It’s just. It wasn’t chosen for him, and they don’t get that, and it gets under Eddie’s skin more than it should.

“Thanks,” he manages. It sounds mopey to his ears, too. Ouch.

The thing, though, is that Richie is wearing a big, shit-eating grin and making no effort whatsoever to hide it. 

That fucking _asshole._

“You knew!” Eddie accuses, pointing at him with barely-restrained hostility. “You knew I wouldn’t – I don’t –!”

“You don’t like them?” Ben realizes. “I mean, they’re not that bad, right? Maybe not _exactly_ your thing, but you know what they say about beggars and choosers.”

Beverly pats his arm to quiet him down. She frowns a little at Richie, whose only response is shameless laughter. “Richie, really? You should have said something!”

Eddie spares the man in question one more withering glare, then eases the stuffed bags out of Beverly’s arms. He can suck it up. Just one more little thing that won’t feel right for as long as he’s here. It’ll be a little extra motivation to find a way out fast.

“It’s fine. They’re clean and they’ll fit.”

“There’s a T-shirt in there,” she offers. “And a few more casual things, if that helps.”

Eddie smiles at her. “It does. I’m sorry, it’s just – it doesn’t matter.”

“Sure it does,” she disagrees. “We want you to be comfortable while you’re here. I’m sure your friends are doing the same for our Eddie, right?”

The thought of it is a physical ache in the back of Eddie’s throat. “Yeah. They’re gonna have a hard time finding him stuff like this, though.”

“Does everyone dress like you in the future?” Richie wonders. “On purpose?”

“I cannot believe I’m hearing this from _you,”_ Eddie retorts. “Of all people. Because the way _I_ remember it, stuff like the jacket you had on yesterday wasn’t exactly peak fashion even in 1990!”

Beverly pretends to stifle a very genuine laugh with her newly-freed hand. “It wasn’t so bad.”

“Hey, comedians get a free pass,” Richie argues. “And aren’t you a big insurance man? Don’t you ever wear fancy suits?”

“Who the fuck wears suits _daily?_ Even this guy,” Eddie makes a sweeping gesture at the room behind him, “doesn’t!”

If he hadn’t already been making indignant eye contact with him, Eddie probably wouldn’t have noticed the way Richie’s gaze flits straight over his shoulder. In a flash, he goes from looking hopeful to looking like a dog who just figured out its owner was only pretending to throw its favorite toy.

But _that_ wasn’t the kind of teasing Eddie was trying to do by a long shot. He knows exactly how bad it feels.

Instead of apologizing, he mutters an excuse about going to get changed, and instead of laughing it off, Richie gives him an unnervingly blank look. Apathetic, maybe. Bored.

“We’ll check in on Bill and Audra,” Ben says. “Then maybe we can go back to where we found you or something.”

“Or something,” Eddie repeats, not particularly caring whether it’s interpreted as lazy agreement or criticism.

His plan was to change quickly and then immediately rejoin the others, but the click of the door’s lock and the drum of retreating footsteps leave him pacing the floor instead. It’s covered in plush carpeting that definitely doesn’t get shampooed often enough, but on the plus side, it’s probably enough to muffle that noise, if not also the dry rasp of a paper bag shredding along one of its seams. 

Apparently jeans were _not_ included on the “more casual things” portion of the shopping list; Eddie reluctantly draws out a pair of brown slacks he _knows_ will look weird with a flannel and a plain white T-shirt. It’s still better than the sweater vest. He’ll only wear that when he has literally no other choice, at which point there won’t even be any clean button-ups left to wear under it.

The odd combination actually doesn’t look so bad when he reluctantly goes to check it out in the bathroom mirror. It helps that the flannel doesn’t seem like something this other guy would wear, either; Eddie wonders who picked it out.

He also wonders what Richie would say if he could see him. He’d probably be glad they got him out of his dirty clothes, one way or another, because he knows how Eddie is about stuff like that. He’d probably rib him about it a little, too, but he’d know when to stop, and if it had been up to him – and to the Beverly and Ben Eddie knows – it’s nice to think they’d’ve known what to get for him in a pinch.

“This is fucking stupid,” Eddie mutters, starting to turn away from the mirror and the ridiculous kicked-puppy look on his face. Richie isn’t here, and if he’s looking for Eddie, there’s no way he’s doing it in the disaster zone that was his bathroom at the Townhouse. 

That’s a little unfair, come to think of it; here Eddie is enjoying a tidy bathroom, while the other Eddie Kaspbrak is stuck side-stepping someone else’s blood, not to mention the lingering traces of tarry leper puke. The Townhouse may have no front desk staff to speak of, but Eddie hopes it has room service, or barring that, that the other Losers at least _offered_ to help clean it up. He’d have done it himself if he’d ever made it back.

 _This is_ very _fucking stupid,_ he tells himself when he catches sight of a pen and pad of paper on the dresser by the window. He’s holding up their investigation for nothing, but what the fuck, if it’ll make him feel better. 

He uncaps the pen and scribbles a note – _‘Sorry about the mess over there,’_ but when he straightens up to inspect it, it looks stilted. Should he mention that he knows for a fact he doesn’t have anything a person could catch from blood? No, that’s none of this guy’s business, and besides, if it was him – which it supposedly _might_ be – that would just make him feel worse, because then he’d be _thinking_ about it.

Well, either no one sees it anyway, or a miracle happens. 

_‘Is my Richie okay? Yours is an asshole.’_

After another moment’s brief hesitation, he signs the bottom with his initials, then returns to tuck it into the bottom of the mirror. 

He locks the room up tight before he leaves. It would be a total dick move to let these people’s friend’s shit get stolen on his watch, and that’s definitely the only reason. He is _not_ worried about prying eyes finding that absurd little note, because who cares, right? 

“Hey,” Ben greets him from a lounge sofa. “Feel better?”

Feeling distinctly caught out, Eddie offers a stiff nod in response. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Do people still get cold in the future?” Richie chimes in. “Or are they gonna invent implants to put a stop to that?”

Eddie doesn’t get it until Beverly translates. “It’s a little chilly out. A sweater might be a good idea.”

“Oh. Uh, sure. Thanks,” Eddie mutters, promptly turning on his heel without waiting to ask about Bill and his wife – or to respond to Richie’s sing-song “you’re welcome – and nice threads, by the way.”

He finds the sweater still tucked into the bottom of one of the shopping bags. Even when they _aren’t_ missing sleeves, Eddie doesn’t wear a lot of these, but there’s nothing all that objectionable about them. It’s green, but the shade is kind of nice. It’s dark, which is more than he can say for most of the clothes he could have borrowed. Still, he straightens up with it just tucked under his arm; he’s not going to give Richie the satisfaction of a full costume change unless he finds that he actually needs it.

Before he leaves for a second time, he flicks on the light in the bathroom and takes a quick peek at the mirror.

His note isn’t where he left it. 

Eddie’s grip on the sweater tightens before he lets it slip right out of his hands and onto the floor. He nearly trips over it on his way in. White paper, white bathroom tiles; it could have just fallen, and there’s no point getting excited until he’s sure that’s not what happened. 

He squats and takes a look around, even cranes his neck to make sure it didn’t just fall behind the sink, but it’s nowhere to be found. 

“Holy shit,” he mutters to himself. He might’ve just done magic. Non-clown-related magic. Well – mostly. He hopes.

It’d be several times as exciting if the magic had also conjured up a reply, but when he straightens up he finds the mirror just as bare as it was a moment ago.

“Might… need a few seconds,” he decides. “Okay, buddy, I’m giving you time to write, so come on.”

 _Several_ seconds pass, then a few minutes, and nothing. There’s no way it should take _minutes_ to write a few sentences in response, maybe with a helpful addition about where they could consider going from here, if anywhere. Eddie takes to pacing again, then startles at the rap of knuckles on the door to the hallway. 

As if he weren’t already disappointed enough, it’s Richie. He gives Eddie a quick once-over and raises an eyebrow. It takes Eddie a moment to realize he must have left the sweater on the bathroom floor, right where he _doesn’t_ want it.

“Thought you might’ve flushed yourself down the toilet,” Richie says conversationally.

“You’d like that,” Eddie mutters not quite under-his-breath enough to prevent Richie from hearing it. “Just a sec.”

Richie catches the door before it can swing shut behind Eddie, but he saves himself an ass-kicking by not actually following him into the room. 

“You okay?” he calls. Eddie flicks the bathroom light off after throwing one more hopeful glance at the still-empty mirror.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he says, cheeks burning as he rounds the corner with the sweater draped over his arm. “I was just trying something.”

Richie holds the door for him, which would have been a nice gesture without the added gloating and the one arm intentionally placed so Eddie has to duck – but not very fucking much – under it to get past. 

“Did it work?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie mutters. “Not really.”

-*-

Once changed into the clothes Richie brought him, Eddie feels somewhat closer to normal. The collared shirts are nice enough, though they’re a little bit big – it works, actually, because Eddie buys his shirts slightly large and then gets them tailored. His mom used to do it for him, but now he pays to get it done himself. It’s a good feeling, honestly; to be in control of his own physical image. Sometimes it’s the only thing he _can_ control. 

So he doesn’t look quite as sharp as he could. That’s not ideal, but it’s not the worst it could be, either. The slacks are too-loose, but not loo-long; he feels like he’s the mildly sloppy substitute teacher at a public school, or something. The loafers they’ve bought him are the kindest touch of all; he knows that he _could’ve_ just worn his rain boots, but he’s grateful not to have to. 

There’s nothing to do for it other than look at himself in the mirror in the bathroom, the one that’s – that’s blood-splattered, because the alt-version of himself was goddamn _stabbed._

Eddie ignores the blood on the floor and the towel-rack that’s fallen. Or at least, he tries to. The towel on the floor is essentially begging him to be picked up, but he’s looking at it like it’s foreign. If he touches it, the other Eddie’s blood will be on his hands. What will that mean? 

Eddie frowns. He slides the cuffs of his shirt as far up his wrists as they’ll go, and he crouches down and picks the towel up by one edge. He tosses it in the bathtub, and then leans the fallen rack against the wall. 

The blood he can’t do much about, not without cleaning supplies he doesn’t have. He shudders, trying to ignore the sharp iron tang in his nose. A strategic retreat may be in order. He straightens up and washes his hands in the sink, slowly and carefully. He flicks his hands to get most of the water off, and then takes a moment to frown at his expression.

He looks tired. Scared, maybe. He hopes it’s not too obvious if you don’t know him, but – well. Probably it is. The clothing isn’t terrible, though. Certainly it could be worse.

He’s about to turn away from this nauseating little room when he sees it – a small and unobtrusive bit of paper that he could’ve sworn wasn’t there before. Written In pen in tilted, scratchy handwriting, there it is: a message. 

Eddie plucks the note out. He’s almost surprised to feel that it’s – real, and physical. His heart rate picks up, because there’s a little E.K. at the bottom and that...should be impossible, but what’s impossible right now? 

_Sorry about the mess over there. Is my Richie okay? Yours is an asshole._ And then the little initials. 

Well.

Eddie stares at the paper, then at the mirror. For a moment, he thinks when he looks up, he’ll see some other man in the reflection. But he just sees himself. 

In the hospital, he’d seen Richie for only a moment. He’s gotta respond _now._

Eddie sits on his borrowed bed and cups a pad of hotel stationary in his palm. How the Hell does he even respond to all that? His brain keeps sticking on ‘Yours is an asshole’ for some reason.

 _Eddie,_ he writes, _don’t worry about the bathroom. I can handle a little blood. Richie is fine, we got him checked out and everything. He’s very irreverent but I can tell he’s worried about you. I’ll tell him you’re okay, too._

He bites his lower lip. 

_I’m sorry you’re not getting on well with my Richie. I think he’s probably stressed, too. Please let him know that I’m in good hands, your friends have been very kind._

_We’re working on finding a way home. We killed the Spider, we can fix this._

He signs it ‘Eddie Kaspbrak’; not his legal signature, but more than the initials left by the other Eddie. Anxious and acutely aware of how long it took him to write this, he crosses back into the crime scene bathroom and slips the paper under the mirror, right where he found the previous one. 

Nothing happens. It’s not like he was expecting instant universe-swapping magic or a puff of smoke, but – Eddie walks out of the bathroom. He closes the door. He paces around Eddie’s room for as long as he can physically stand to – and then he opens the door back up. 

The note is still there. Eddie sighs. Probably he’s missed the window for communication, which is his own fault for writing too long a note. Still, though. He keeps turning over the other Eddie’s note in his hands, the excitement of having received it starting to set in fully. He wants to show the other Losers. Richie in particular, maybe. He’s still not quite sure he understands the tension that Richie parted with, but…he rubs at his forehead. He’s been feeling a headache coming on all morning; it’s only a matter of time. Well, at least he’s surrounded by the contents of a futuristic pharmacy if it comes down to that, but he wishes his own pillbox hadn’t got so waterlogged upon his arrival in this different Derry. 

He isn’t sure what to think about _Richie_ being something in his life that’s headache-inducing. He’d written ‘my Richie’ in the note to Eddie, because that’s how Eddie had designated them too, and well – it’s accurate. _His_ Richie made him feel so safe, so relieved, in their brief time together before fighting the thing under Derry, and now he’s without his lifeline. He runs a hand through his own hair, reflexively. 

Eddie slides the note into one pocket. The future telephone chooses that moment to flash again, and he frowns and pockets it, too, in case Richie or someone else wants to look at the messages again.

“Eddie!” Ben says, when Eddie dares step foot at the bottom of the stairs. “We were just talking about you.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. “All good, I hope?” He’s not sure what he thinks of the Losers discussing him; he can’t blame them at all, he’s been thinking of them all in – presumably – the same harsh light that they’ve been thinking of him. 

Beverly sends a dark look Ben’s way, like he’s missed some memo she’s sent out. 

“Of course, Eddie,” Beverly says. “Hey, look, we’re all going to eat breakfast and figure out what we’re going to do, alright? You’re more than welcome to join us.”

“Of course,” Ben says, and his smile is so genuine that Eddie wouldn’t dare doubt it. He offers a tentative smile back, because that’s all he has to give right now. He’s thinking, very keenly, of the gap between their Eddie and himself. Regardless of how he feels about it, though – he needs allies right now. And the Losers are the best allies anyone could ask for, he’s pretty sure that’s true in any universe.

He bites his lip. “There’s something I want to show you, actually,” he says. “I’ll wait until we’re all together, okay?”

The note from the other Eddie gets a very enthusiastic response from the breakfast table. Eddie tries to remind them that his attempt to respond seemed to fail, so they haven’t _actually_ established two-way communication, but it doesn’t particularly seem to matter. 

“Of course he took the time to drag the other me,” Richie says, grinning down at the paper in his hands. “Oh my God! He’s such a dick!”

“And more importantly,” Ben says, “we know he’s safe.”

“‘The mess,’” Beverly quotes, then looks up at Eddie with her brow furrowed. “Shit, Eddie, the blood in the bathroom – and we just left you with it, I’m so sorry!” 

“Oh fuck,” Richie says. “Sorry, man, we can totally clean that shit up today. I’m not convinced that anyone actually works at the Town House, but how hard can it be to find...whatever you use to clean up blood. Bleach?” 

“A bleach solution would work to disinfect it,” Mike says. 

“Oh-kay, blood expert guy. Do you think they have cleaning stuff in the communal closet?”

“I have plenty at my place, if they don’t.” Mike turns bodily towards Eddie, then. He’s got an extremely reassuring smile. “We’ll fix it, Eddie.”

“Alright?” Eddie says, a little nonplussed. “Thank you, but I wasn’t angry or anything. I mean, we all have...a lot to worry about right now.” He offers Mike a smile back in return. 

Several of the Losers exchange significant glances that Eddie can’t interpret. 

“Wow,” Richie says, after a minute. “You really are...not him.”

Eddie crosses his arms over his chest reflexively. “Yeah. I’m getting that.” 

“We don’t mean it in a bad way, Eddie,” Beverly says, frowning a little. 

“Yeah, you’re like his good twin!” Richie says. Mike and the others are just watching him sort of curiously. Eddie doesn’t know what to say, now. 

“Don’t worry about trying to be him, Eddie,” Mike says. Eddie turns back towards him and his reassuring presence. “We don’t expect anything. Promise.” Beside him, Bill nods, and Eddie attempts to make himself believe what Mike is saying.

“Okay,” he says, softly. He forces himself to uncross his arms, and then he smiles out at the table, and it’s only a _little_ forced. “So...what’s the plan?”

The only ideas they end up developing are concerningly simplistic, but then, it’s not like Eddie’s got any better ones. The Losers figure that there must be some level of overlap between this Derry and the one Eddie knows – and seeing Richie in the hospital and the note in Eddie’s room seems to imply that there’s some sort of geographical component to it, too. 

“So we’re trying to go to the same places at the same time?” Bill says, frowningly. “D-do we even know the other Losers are trying this, too?” 

“I think we just have to assume they are,” Mike says. “I mean, they _are_ versions of us, right? And it’s what we came up with.”

“We can draw them a map of town as we go,” Richie suggests. “‘X’ marks Eddie.” 

“Yep, that’ll totally do it, Rich,” Beverly says, dryly. 

“Where are we heading first?” Ben says. “Eddie, what are places that exist both here and where you’re from?” 

“I don’t really know the town that well,” Eddie admits. “And I don’t...I mean, I don’t know where he’d want to go. The other Eddie, I mean.” 

“There’s the quarry,” Beverly says. “But you already saw that –” 

“That doesn’t exist in my – uh. My timeline, I guess,” Eddie says, which makes Beverly stare at him. 

“Sorry?” He tries, awkwardly. 

Beside her, Richie shakes his head. “C’mon, Bev, like our Eddie would wanna go back there anyway.” He glances over at Eddie. “You’re sure you can’t think of anywhere?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie says, trying not to get frustrated. “The library? The theater?” He’s got good memories of the theater, but they’re good memories with _his_ Richie.

Richie goes a little bit wide-eyed. “The movie theater?” 

“Yeah?” Eddie says, wondering if he should be embarrassed by the suggestion; if there’s something inherently shameful to it. Is even the town itself so different? 

“I don’t know about all of you, but my Losers and I definitely frequented the movie theater. More than we should, really. We definitely snuck into more adult-rated films than we should’ve.”

At that, Richie laughs softly.

“Shit,” he says. “Yeah, I guess that’s fair. It’s closed now, I don’t know if you know –” 

“Richie mentioned something like that in my Derry –”

“Well, it’s been closed for a long time, here –”

It’s there that Beverly interrupts them. “It’s still someplace we’ve all been. Worth a try, right? Rich, you used to love that place.” 

“Ah,” Richie says, “I sure did!”

Eddie’s eyes dart between them sort of uselessly. There’s a sudden tension there, but he doesn’t know either Beverly or Richie well enough to interpret it. 

“Come on,” Beverly says, and she’s clearly kind of annoyed. “It’s worth a shot, right?” 

“I think it’s a good idea,” Eddie finds himself saying, abruptly. Everyone turns and looks at him. He winces, a little. “I mean it’s – it’s a start, right?” He needs action, movement. He needs to do _something._

“I’m with Eddie,” Mike says, and that seems to be something of a deciding factor for everyone. “Let’s try it.” 

-*-

“To catch an Eddie, you have to think like an Eddie.”

 _“Please_ stop saying that.”

Richie squints at Eddie like he’s studying a rare bug. All he’s missing is the perfect miming of a magnifying glass; Eddie knows he could expect that of _his_ Richie. 

“Nah,” Mustache Richie announces. “I couldn’t think like _you_ if my life depended on it.”

“What would our Eddie do at a time like this, then?” Beverly asks. Eddie’s pretty sure she’s just humoring him, but the question sounds genuine. 

Richie shrugs. “Probably go for a nice stroll to help digest breakfast?”

“We could try the creek, then,” Ben suggests.

“Could we catch up with you in a few hours?” Bill interrupts with an apologetic look. He and Audra only abandoned their room at the Inn long enough to join the rest of them for a meal, so the request comes as something of a surprise to Eddie. Audra talked more than _he_ did over their first shared meal, but he supposes she could still be exhausted by yesterday’s events, whether she shows it much or not.

His Richie probably is, too, not that Eddie has any way of fucking knowing. 

God, what if he didn’t get a response because everyone was still at the hospital with him? Something could be seriously wrong if he had to stay the night under medical observation – or worse –

“You two are gonna miss a hell of a party,” this universe’s Richie says. His voice is positively dripping in sarcasm. _He_ doesn’t sound sick at all.

“I hate to miss the grand tour,” Audra says, warmly. “Bill’s a bit knackered.”

Jesus. Eddie would kill to have Richie here right now. Richie would kill to _be_ here right now.

Bill nods. “Yeah, I’ll be more help after I catch up on sleep. Gives Audra a chance to see what’s on TV around here, too, right?”

“Uh,” Ben says, “sure, Bill. We’ll give you guys a call later, see if you wanna meet up for dinner or something?”

The second they’re out of earshot – or maybe before they actually are – Richie turns to the rest of them. “Anyone else think she’s definitely above watching American soap operas?”

Well, anything is fine if all you need is background noise to drown out something else. Eddie sure as hell isn’t going to be the one to say _that,_ though.

“I think she’ll be disappointed,” Beverly agrees, but her tone implies she’s aware of how flaky that excuse was. She looks at Eddie. “So, do you want to try the creek?”

“What creek?” There’s the _river,_ Eddie supposes, but he has no fucking clue why his friends would choose to go there if the goal is to rekindle the connection they had in the hospital – and maybe, albeit one-sidedly, in their respective hotels. He shakes his head. “No… do you guys have a theater?”

“The Paramount?” 

“It’s not… called that, back home, but. I mean, you guys probably spent some time there as kids, too, right?”

“Our options were pretty limited,” Beverly laughs.

“It’s not even open,” Richie grouses. 

Ben gives him a short pat on the back. “Then no one will mind if we take a quick look around, right?”

“The only thing we’re gonna find there is bats and dust bunnies!” Richie insists. “Why would Spaghetti Man go there, anyway?”

Eddie remembers his Richie’s unexplained arcade token and resolves to dig his own heels in twice as hard as _this_ Richie is. _“My_ friends might, and they’re probably not still standing around arguing about it.”

“Who’s arguing, Fettuccine? I’m just trying to help, but if you’re that eager to waste more time here with us, don’t let me stop you!”

“Jesus, Richie,” Ben cuts in. “You can go wait with Bill or Mike if it bothers you that much.”

“No, I’m coming,” Richie says immediately. He takes off down the sidewalk before anyone else can move. It should undermine his previous resistance, but instead it just emphasizes his distaste for plan B – or is it plan C? Maybe Eddie should start keeping track so that he can be appropriately disheartened when they hit Z.

“It’s not your fault,” Beverly tells him on the way. “He might just be upset that it went under.”

Eddie doesn’t see what that has to do with anything; whether it’s 1990 or 2016, it’s been decades since most of them were last in their respective versions of Derry. The version he used to live in _can’t_ be the only one that’s changed a lot. It’s not just a single old theater going bust.

He understands even less when they actually make it to the theater and he realizes that it doesn’t have any of the flashy old arcade games he’d been expecting to see.

 _Right – 1990, subtract 27 years, give or take…_ Jesus, their options really _were_ limited. So what the fuck does this Richie care, if he didn’t have as much reason as Eddie’s did to while away endless hours in this dusty old place?

“It sure _looks_ haunted,” Beverly comments. “It’s a little sad, seeing it like this.”

“Tried to warn ya,” Richie mutters, kicking at a discarded fountain soda cup. “Bats and dust bunnies.”

Eddie marches right past them, though he pauses at the door to one of the theater’s three houses long enough to use his sweater as a barrier between his fingers and the handle. The hinges creak softly, but it’s not a horror movie sound despite the darkness of the theater beyond. It’s not exactly an abandoned building, just a defunct one. They’re trespassing, technically.

“Think we’re a little late to catch a movie,” Ben comments, startling Eddie midway through reaching into his pocket for his phone. It’s still safely and uselessly stowed in Mike’s car, of course. _That’s_ getting old fast. 

Eddie sighs. “Did anyone bring a flashlight?”

“If you don’t even have a gadget that does _that,_ the future must really suck,” Richie pipes up from even farther behind them. “Are we done here?”

Eddie brushes past him on his way back out to the lobby. It’s not as if the others are likely to go poking around unlit, rodent-infested movie houses, anyway; there isn’t a version of Eddie alive anywhere who’d do that without a good reason.

“I’m gonna leave a note,” he decides instead, then pauses, half afraid to even ask. “Any pens?”

“I have one.” It only takes Beverly a second to produce it from some well-organized corner of her purse; Eddie takes it and then gives her an apologetic look. She returns it. “No paper, though. Sorry.”

A quick search of the ticket and concessions counters doesn’t turn up any conveniently abandoned rolls of receipt paper. Eddie eyes the soda cup, but he _really_ doesn’t want to have to pick that up off the floor. More than likely, there are still traces of some long-departed moviegoer’s saliva all over the inside of that thing. And, again, why would _anyone_ pick it up looking for a sign from another dimension?

Richie comes over to recline against the counter. It’s the most relaxed his posture has been since they got here. “How about some light vandalism?”

Eddie follows his gaze to a section of wall wedged between posters for _Dead Poets Society_ and _The Final Frontier._ Huh. There’s a thought. “Are there cameras in this place?”

Richie grins. “What’s it matter to you? You’re a ghost.”

“If anyone asks, we never saw you,” Ben agrees. He pretends to cover his eyes and turn the other way while Eddie joins Richie in front of the counter. 

“What do we wanna say?”

“Ask them to go to the creek,” Richie says. “Where we built the dam, obviously, or there’s a non-zero chance they wind up on the other side of town.”

Eddie almost hates to spoil the moment, but, _“We_ never built any dam, though.”

Ben stops pretending not to notice them. “Seriously? But that was one of the first things I ever built!”

 _Sorry for not having the same memories as you,_ Eddie almost snaps. He doesn’t, though, because he has a similar one.

“What about a clubhouse?”

“A what now?”

“I mean, is a dam all you built?”

“In Derry? Yeah,” Ben says. “You built a clubhouse over a creek?”

 _“You_ did,” Eddie says. “Er, our Ben. And _no,_ it was just out in the woods.”

“Is something like that going to work, though?” Beverly asks. “A theater is a theater, but if we’re talking about two different places…”

“Worth a shot?” Ben offers. “Kinda wish I could see that, though. A clubhouse. Huh.”

Eddie smiles in spite of himself. “It was pretty great.”

Turns out dark brown paint on a vertical surface isn’t exactly conducive to long messages written with a bank’s complimentary pen. Eddie resorts to trying to warm the ink up on his palm, probable lead poisoning be damned. He gets about three words in to what was supposed to be several sentences before Beverly taps him on the shoulder.

“Just carve it in there. Don’t worry about the pen,” she advises. 

“Yeah, it’ll be more noticeable that way.” Richie has also wandered over to watch Eddie work, his arms crossed on his chest. It’s the first time Eddie’s noticed that while he may be taller, he’s not as broad as the Trashmouth Eddie knows; unless he’s packing serious muscle under that obviously padded jacket, there’s no question about which of the two would win an arm-wrestling match. 

Eddie shrugs off the non sequitur and presses the pen in a little harder where the first line of the first word begins. “It’s also gonna look like something the fucking clown did,” he remarks.

“So don’t make it look creepy,” Richie very helpfully suggests. “Jesus, your handwriting sucks.”

“Do _you_ wanna try writing neatly on a fucking movie theater wall?” Eddie retorts. He makes no actual move to let Richie have the pen, though, and Richie doesn’t try to take it.

There’s no easy way to explain _why_ their friends should try to meet them in a completely different spot – one that arguably doesn’t even exist here. _‘Closest we could come up with’_ doesn’t exactly clear it up, but it’s all Eddie can think to write – or… violently scrape. His acquaintances aren’t exactly overflowing with suggestions, either, so he leaves it at that.

“How will we know if it worked?” Ben asks when Eddie takes a step back to inspect his work. “I mean, that’s pretty solidly on a wall here. Is it supposed to just disappear?”

The paper in the bathroom did, not that Ben knows that. The only problem is that for _this_ to go anywhere, either the whole wall would have to phase through to another dimension, or, what? The chipped bits of paint and plaster now littering the loud movie theater carpet at Eddie’s feet would have to float back up into the empty spaces the pen left.

“We could get you and Spaghetti to vandalize something at the same time,” Richie tells Eddie. “Then _bam,_ you’ll switch back and whoever buys this building will forever wonder what _that’s_ all about.” He waggles his finger at Eddie’s note and the mess on the floor. He’s not wrong – to anyone else, it would be completely incomprehensible. It’s sort of a fun thought; in another life, they could’ve whiled away hours in the clubhouse theorizing about a recent slew of ghost messages. Mike would’ve loved it so much he’d _still_ be talking about his personal encounter with a local cryptid back in the early ‘90s, and it would’ve been fine because the cryptid wouldn’t have _literally eaten children._

“There’s no ‘same time’ when they’re literally 26 years ahead of us,” he says, but his mouth won’t form the scowl he means for it to. 

“Kinda seemed like there was at the hospital, though.” Ben is eyeing the propped door that leads out to the sidewalk; it _is_ broad daylight, after all, and they may not have bothered to lock a closed building in a small town – a stupid move, anyway, and one that will definitely come back to bite them the second the local teens figure it out – but it’s probably for the best that they don’t get caught here, anyway. Eddie doesn’t particularly want to find out what the inside of a jail cell was like in 1990.

“Oh!” 

Eddie tears his gaze away from the door half-expecting to see pristine, undamaged wall where his message was a moment ago. 

Nothing’s changed. Beverly has drifted over to stand directly in front of the _Dead Poets Society_ poster, and Richie and Ben look as confused as Eddie is, at least until they notice what she’s looking at.

The poster is sporting a new addition across the empty space near the top, blue ink on yellow – and yellow _ing_ – paper.

_Why the hell didn’t I think of that?_

The message reads, _‘Got it, we’ll head there. Hopefully it works this time._

_‘P.S. Richie wants you to know we wrote this on the You’ve Got Mail poster in case you can’t see that.’_

Beverly reads it aloud for all of them and glances at the Richie standing behind her, beside Eddie as she does. Eddie is too busy reading and rereading the words on the paper to notice or care how Richie reacts. He wishes again that he had his phone on him so he could snap a picture. In lieu of that, he’s tempted to tear it down and take it with them, even at the risk of looking completely unhinged to his companions. 

_They got our message. And we got theirs._

_And Richie is with them. Richie is okay enough to be with them._

_And absolutely nothing has fucking changed._

“‘You’ve Got Mail?’” Ben repeats. 

“It’s a movie,” Eddie explains, like that wasn’t already obvious. It does help, though, to focus on that. Leave it to Richie to give him something less stressful to think about at a time like this, and in the form of a stupid, ironic joke. “It came out in… either 1998 or 1999, I think. Starring Meg Ryan?”

 _“When Harry Met Sally!”_ Beverly recalls with an excited clap of her hands. “So she’s going to have a good career down the line?”

Eddie smiles. Clearly he isn’t in the _worst_ possible alternate universe. “God, that was just last year for you guys, right? I kinda hate to spoil the surprise, but _don’t_ miss the one she’ll be in in like… five years.”

“Sooo, I’m guessing that’s a romcom too?” Richie says, gesturing at the note. There’s a twinkle in his eye that’s either mischievous or genuinely interested, and Eddie can’t tell which, not even when he adds, _“You_ like those? Do I? I mean, in your neck of the woods, that guy, does he?”

The second question might be all that keeps Eddie from defensively tearing Richie The Second a new one.

“Yes,” he says. “And… unless he was planning to apologize for poking fun at me about it when we were kids, I’m gonna go with still no.”

He leaves off the all-important fact that Richie still never made Eddie go to the theater alone; he even let him pick some objectively bad romcoms more often than was probably fair when he stayed over. He’d make fun, but he never ruined the experience of watching them, and Eddie can admit that some of them even deserved it, a little.

“What’s he like?” Richie persists. “Comedies, right? Just not the romantic ones.”

“Duh,” Eddie replies. “And horror.”

Richie looks genuinely surprised by that. “Wow. Not me.”

“Seriously?” They start to follow Ben and Bev back out the door; Eddie nearly trips on a bit of carpet that somehow got peeled back and left like that. Maybe this place had to close because management couldn’t be bothered to do anything about shit like that. It’s a fucking liability, is what it is. “What, too scary?”

“Yeah, yeah, fake blood gives me the heebie jeebies,” Richie retorts. “Robots, too.”

“You were definitely scared of _I Was a Teenage Werewolf,”_ Beverly recalls. 

“F-Eddie-ccinne here doesn’t wanna hear about that, that’s ancient history!”

For fuck’s sake, if – _when_ Eddie gets home, it’s gonna take him a while to decide if letting his own Richie in on that nickname is worth the risk of him possibly adopting it, himself.

He misses _Eds._

“Yeah, it really is. What year is that from, anyway? The 1930s?”

“It was old then, too,” Ben says, maybe a touch defensively. 

“But not _that_ old,” Beverly adds.

“Alright, before we go on coming up with new insults for poor old Richie, what are we doing? Gonna leave our dear friends out of the loop on this one, too, or invite everyone out for a picnic?”

“I don’t wanna miss them,” Eddie hedges, meaning _his_ friends. 

“You said yourself, there’s no ‘same time’ anyway,” Richie presses. “C’mon, whaddaya say? One phone call before we go on our merry way?”

“Two,” Beverly corrects. “We need to see how Mike’s doing.”

It’s kinda hard to argue with _that,_ so Eddie lets himself be led to a pay phone – a fucking _pay phone_ – and watches while the others make the first call. It’s an opportunity to don the sweater, which involves some shuffling of layers – flannel off, sweater on, flannel back on after a moment of indecision about carrying it around or tying it around his waist.

They haven’t been out and about long at all, but it’s already gotten colder. If only Eddie could remember if there was a cold snap in his Derry circa 1990.

Ben hangs up the phone and beckons Eddie over, too. 

“So, turns out Bill and Audra already went to meet Mike. They left a message with the front desk.”

The corners of Eddie’s mouth slip downward. “Are we gonna go meet them there?”

“Would you mind?” Beverly asks.

Eddie doesn’t even have to talk his way around a definite _yes_ before Richie comes up and throws an arm around his shoulders – which Eddie immediately throws off with more force than might have been strictly necessary. Richie holds both hands up in surrender and says, “Hey, relax. I was just gonna say, we don’t have to travel in a pack. I’d hate to miss Spaghetti, too, so why don’t we just meet up by the creek?”

That’s a pretty quick one-eighty to pull, but as guilty as Eddie feels about stealing one of an injured Mike’s friends away from his bedside, it’s not like he can find this place all by himself. 

He points approvingly at Richie and doesn’t say anything. Ben and Bev exchange a look, almost a smile, and Ben says, “Sure, Richie. You guys want us to bring anything for lunch?”

“Food,” Richie says. “Something this guy here isn’t allergic to. Carrots?”

Lunch is the last thing on Eddie’s mind right now. He’s been picky enough about everything as it is – might as well make concessions where he can. “Whatever’s fine.”

Beverly slips out of the phone booth to plant a hand on Eddie’s arm. “Hang on.”

He hadn’t even been in the process of leaving; he wouldn’t know which direction to walk, and instead of taking the lead, Richie’s staring expectantly at her.

“Since we’re here – well, I know she isn’t the same, but would you like to try getting in contact with your – or, _our_ Eddie’s mother?”

A pit opens in Eddie’s stomach. “Uh – what?”

“I don’t mean it like that,” Beverly hurriedly tries to reassure him. “Not out of obligation, just… well, do you think it would help? There’s always a chance she’s not so different after all, right? Or it… might be nice to know…”

Eddie’s heart feels like it could give out lodged halfway up his throat. Whatever he looks like, it must be enough to scare Beverly out of finishing that thought. 

“I think I’m good,” he says, his voice strange. “Thanks anyway.”

Fuck. He picks a direction and takes off in it, and he doesn’t slow down even when Richie catches up and falls in line beside him, just a little more breathless than he is.

“You know…”

“Don’t wanna know,” Eddie bites out.

“You sure? Because you’re going in the exact wrong direction. Just a friendly heads-up.”

Eddie stops and tries, really _tries_ not to glare at Richie. “Can we just take a f- a cab?”

Richie shrugs. “Sure, if one happens past. Don’t worry, no one’s gonna make you talk to anyone’s mom if we turn around in the meantime, ‘kay? Ben and Bev already went to parlay with the others.” He comes within an inch of grabbing Eddie by the shoulders and steering him in the right direction, but he must be genuinely trying to avoid a fight, too, because he drops his hands instead.

Eddie lets his shoulders droop a little in response. “Pretty sure the word you’re looking for is parl _ey_.”

“If Shakespeare can do it, why the hell can’t I?” Richie exclaims. It’s so… unlike his Richie, and so _like_ this guy. It isn’t funny – it’s hardly a joke – but Eddie manages a smile, anyway.

He lets Richie lead the way; it’s a pretty long walk, all things considered, and Eddie is surprised to learn that the creek they’re looking for isn’t all that far from where he first appeared. He’d like to think that’s promising, somehow, even if it probably means nothing.

Of course he doesn’t have anything on him to leave another message for his friends, and all his searching yields no sign of them. Just a lot of bare trees, rocks and mud. It was only a matter of time before Richie got tired of watching him getting impatient all over again and decided to try and get some free entertainment out of him instead.

“Is this the same as your thing about the clothes?”

Eddie does glare at him this time; he’s leaned up against a tree, picking at the bark with one hand while he stares at Eddie.

“You’re not big on sharing,” Richie adds. As explanations go, it’s not much of one. 

“Can I help you with something?” Eddie snaps. More to himself but not so quietly that Richie won’t hear, he also mutters, “Just fucking talk in riddles, that’s great.”

“Okay, what’s the deal about Spaghetti’s mom? Or yours.”

 _“Mine_ is dead, alright? What fucking difference does it make?”

“Oh,” Richie says, pushing off from the tree to get a little closer to Eddie. He’d take a step back to match if there weren’t ankle-deep running water behind him. The only thing worse than these loafers would be these loafers, _wet._ “Uh, sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Eddie snaps. “I don’t need that.”

If Richie thinks he’s a creep for not being sufficiently broken up about his own mother’s death – fuck, Eddie doesn’t _care,_ and anyway he could never guess it from the guy’s expression. “Well – don’t hold it against Bev, alright? We only know what our Eddie told us. Only person who’s even likely to have that phone number is Mike.”

“Why would Mike have my – _his_ mom’s number?” Eddie wonders in spite of himself. He connects the dots on his own a second later and barks a harsh laugh. “Oh. He still lives with her. Right.”

“You don’t have to say it like that,” Richie says, voice low. “She’s kinda… well, it’s complicated.”

“Like I don’t know,” Eddie says to a rock sitting a little left of where it had been when he first found it. Richie comes close enough to insert his shoes into Eddie’s line of vision, but instead of speaking he just toes at another rock. There’s not a mark on it; Eddie’s lips quirk down again. 

“What are you actually trying to ask?”

Richie squats and makes a show of inspecting the same ground as Eddie. “Hey, now, I’m not trying to pull the wool over your eyes here. That’s all I was gonna say. Unless you wanna volunteer anything, like, let’s see… who _you_ live with?”

Eddie holds his breath to keep from sighing. “My wife.”

Even in profile, he can see Richie’s eyes widen a little. “You’re married? To a woman?”

“Yes, to a fucking woman! Why does everyone always fucking say that?”

“It’s a joke, Eddieccine. They a lost art form in your century, or what? Chill.”

“Do _not_ tell me to chill,” Eddie snarls at him. “Yeah, I’m married to a woman and it’s – why are the only jokes you and Richie have in common the fucking – the shitty ones? We have – well, it’s not – our relationship is”—Rather than try to finish justifying himself to someone who doesn’t need any fucking justification, Eddie throws his hands up and stalks a little farther upstream, in the direction of the low-hanging stone bridge. It’s the slamming of the proverbial door that, with any luck, will at least forestall any more questions about trying to get in touch with alternate versions of the woman he _definitely_ made a mistake marrying. 

Yeah, he’s definitely safe on that front. Who’d wanna carry on a conversation with a guy who doesn’t miss his dead mother or likely worried sick, very far-flung wife? From where Richie’s standing, frowning like he’s just been forced to touch roadkill, it probably looks like Eddie’s never wrung a single drop of genuine affection from that shriveled thing in his chest.

-*-

It’s not the Paramount, it’s the Aladdin, which is weird. In fact, the whole place is solidly different; the layout; the arcade in the foyer; Hell, even the doors. It’s all dirtied and sad-looking, too; a victim of the changes that apparently happened in both Derrys. All of that stops mattering, though, because they find what they came for surprisingly quickly. On a wall between two movie posters, there’s a marking – it’s Ben who spots it first, and when he leans in to look at it, he grins suddenly. 

“Hey, guys! Something tells me this graffiti wasn’t here yesterday…”

They all crowd around, and sure enough, there it is.

TRY THE CLUBHOUSE, the messy, un-subtle carving says. CLOSEST WE COULD COME UP WITH. WE’RE GOING TO THE CREEK.

“So the other Losers _are_ doing this, too!” Beverly says, delighted. Eddie can’t deny that he’s excited, too.

“Great minds think alike,” Richie says, and he leans in, brushing careful fingers over the carved message.

“Should we write a response?” Ben says. 

Eddie’s thinking about the note on his mirror that didn’t vanish, but he still says, “We should at least try.”

“What do we wanna say, though?” Mike says, uncapping a pen that he apparently carries with him. 

“Keep it simple,” Beverly says. 

“Fair enough,” Mike says, and he writes _Got it_ , because they did, they got the message. 

“Fuck, what if they can’t see the poster, though?”

“Oh, that’s a tragedy,” Beverly says, and Eddie grins a little to himself because he already knows her well enough to hear the heavy sarcasm there. As distanced and separated as he feels from these Losers – because, well, he is – he still sees enough of his friends in him that he’s charmed.

“Okay, left that in the note, too,” Mike says, straightening from where he’s been bent slightly over because he is – Eddie’s noticed – very, very, tall. 

Richie laughs. “God, I hope they get this one. Eds’ll love that – they’ve got mail, literally!”

There’s a sense of hopeful excitement thrumming between them that makes this the best Eddie’s felt all day. He was hoping to see Richie again, but this a sign of life, and a sign they’re on the right track. 

“To the clubhouse?” Ben prompts, and then they’re off again.

-*-

The arrival of Bill, Audra, Ben, Bev _and_ Mike is preceded by their voices, which carry from the road above long before they come slipping and sliding down the leaf-littered hill to where Richie and Eddie are sitting alternating between picking at vegetation and scanning the trees for a glimpse of a familiar face.

“Careful, Mike. Do you need a hand – _here”—_

“I’m just fine,” comes the laughing response. “Oh – thank you.”

Eddie is _positive_ they wouldn’t actually let a seriously injured man go for a hike on any kind of slope in the _very_ far from sterile woods, and he remains sure of it despite the approaching chatter right up until Mike comes into view, flanked on either side by Bill and Audra and clearly struggling to stay upright without wincing.

Eddie can’t believe the hospital even discharged him. Actually he can, and he’s sure it must have been on the condition that he go _home_ and do _nothing_ but rest.

“Really, it’s fine,” he’s saying. “I won’t have to do much moving down here, and I have these on the off chance anything does happen.”

Eddie lets his mounting concern drive him right up to Mike, who _thankfully_ looks a lot more lucid than he did yesterday, at the very least. He doesn’t snatch the pill bottle from Mike’s hand, but only because the smile he reserves for Eddie is a lot less certain than the one he directs at the others. Friendly, sure, but not as wholeheartedly so. It still feels like more than Eddie’s earned.

“Can I,” he tries, clears his throat and repeats, “Can I see that.”

Mike looks confused but passes him the little orange bottle anyway. “It’s for the pain,” he explains helpfully. “I doubt I’ll need all of that, though.”

Eddie doesn’t try to hide his grimace. “Yeah, no fucking kidding. This is really intense stuff.”

In point of fact, he’s at least eighty percent sure it’s not even _legal_ anymore when he’s from, but that’s one can of worms he’s not the least bit prepared to open in front of a bunch of people who do _not_ need to know about the fucking opioid crisis. The anti-drug stuff he remembers from his childhood was already crazy enough without throwing that kind of foresight into the mix. 

All he can do is pass it back and make Mike promise to take it easy – cut the pills in half, even, unless he _really_ can’t get by without a full dose. If that incompetent ass of a doctor thought overprescribing like this was warranted, what the hell was he _doing_ removing Mike from direct medical observation? Did they at least drive to get here?

“Of course,” Mike responds with a warm smile. He leaves Eddie with enough space to resume his rant before he decides to go ahead and add, “You’re really not so different from our Eddie, are you?”

“That’s comparing a sweet apple to a sour orange,” Richie says, coming up behind him.

“Sorry to hear that about the other me,” Eddie returns. It’s petty, but he mostly just wants the joke to undermine Richie’s low blow. 

That plan backfires, though, because all it actually gets him is an enthusiastic belly laugh and a few chuckles from the others. Richie’s hand does a pretty good impression of a bat flying into Eddie’s hair, complete with the startled yelp he can’t help but make, but he’s too slow to swat it away – or this touchy-feely should-be-almost-70-year-old has finally wised up enough to jerk his hand back to safety _fast._

“How’s the other me deal with not being the only one around here who’s funny _and_ an asshole, huh?” 

“By actually being funny,” Eddie grumbles, cheeks hot under the sudden deluge of unexpectedly positive attention.

Bill is the one who lets him off the hook. “Any l-luck?”

Behind him, Bev and Ben are preoccupied with each other and the plastic bags they’ve lugged down with them; clearly, the picnic thing is actually happening.

Good – until Eddie has something tangible, a second glimpse of Richie, or better yet, an immediate end to being fucking trapped here, he’s not going anywhere, so they might as well hunker down. 

_‘Hunker down?’ Jeez, Eds, you sound like an eighty-year-old grandpa. This guy’s rubbing off on you._

_But not nearly as much as_ you _have,_ Eddie thinks desperately.

He picks at the convenience store sandwich Ben offers him and keeps hoping he’ll see his Richie walk out of the trees and bushy vegetation like Bigfoot’s friendly cousin. Even Beverly’s first attempt at getting his attention only drags a little better than half of it away from a flicker of movement – a squirrel.

“Uh…” Eddie shakes his head and makes reluctant eye contact with her. “Yeah?”

Beverly casts a look about to ensure that no one is paying too much attention to them. Even Richie seems engrossed in his food – as Eddie learned this morning, it takes a lot to feed a guy that big. Add that to the list of things both Richies have in common.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” she says. “I should have thought better of that _before_ I said it.”

Eddie sets his uneaten sandwich half back down on the paper wrapper it came in. If the bugs he keeps trying to swat away want it, they can fucking have it. “We’ll call it even if my friends try to get the other guy to talk to my wife.”

Her reaction is a near-perfect reproduction of Richie’s, wide eyes and all. “Uh – oh. Wh-what’s her name?”

“Myra,” Eddie says. He sneaks another glance at Richie; he’s not looking at them, but he’s put his food down and isn’t talking to anyone else, either. He might as well have one ear literally swiveled in their direction. For all the good it’ll do, Eddie tries to lower his voice. “She’s probably blowing up my phone right now.”

Beverly chokes on a bite of her own sandwich. Ben passes her a bottle of water, looking equally alarmed. 

_“Who?”_

_“Why?”_

“Oh,” Eddie realizes. “Oh, shit – not like that, not like, _literally._ I mean she’s probably maxed out the storage on my phone. Jesus. If she thought literally setting fire to something might bring me back, she – uh, might. But everything’s fine!” He has to resist the urge to wince. 

“That’s… sweet?” Beverly tries.

“Huh,” Ben comments, a little _too_ mildly for Eddie’s liking. It still would have been better if he left it at that single vaguely judgmental word, but instead he reaches over and gives Eddie a pat on the shoulder with his unwashed, just-finished-eating hands. “Well, if our Eddie’s mom knew where to call, she’d probably be, uh, blowing up the Inn’s phone, too. We’ll get you both home so no one has to worry, alright?”

“Great,” Eddie says flatly. He doesn’t even think to shake off Ben’s hand, he’s so busy stressing about that eventuality. So he gets through this, sees Richie and everyone, and then?

Jesus, as if he wasn’t already fully aware of how far from _sweet_ it is that he really thinks Myra would do something drastic if she had any idea how or where to find him. As if he needed the fucking reminder that his mother, or this universe’s approximation of her, would have, too. 

It’s not like he _enjoys_ making people worry about him.

The shadows of the trees eventually get so long that they fully eclipse the stream and the seven of them scattered at various points around it, a whole party of lookouts jumping at birds, squirrels and falling leaves.

Mainly because it _definitely_ won’t help his rapidly declining mood if any of these people have to finally stop exchanging uncomfortable looks and actually say it matter-of-factly to his face, Eddie resolves to be the first one to suggest that they give up.

“This clearly isn’t fucking working, and Mike should be in bed, not…” He gestures a little guiltily at Mike, who’s channeling his inner Huck Finn reclining on the ground with his head propped up on a makeshift pillow of spare jackets and a blanket retrieved from the car.

Bill sneezes – once, twice, three times, and Mike turns his sympathetic look away from Eddie to raise an eyebrow at him.

“Bless you.”

“Thanks,” Bill says. “Don’t kn-know where that came from.”

Audra lifts a hand to his forehead. “Some allergy medication might not be a bad idea.”

Bill chuckles. “That would explain the r-ringing in my ears.”

“Maybe someone’s talking about you,” Richie says blandly.

“If he’s as famous in this universe as he is in mine, that’s probably true,” Eddie says. The tail end of that sentence becomes a groan as he stretches his poor, abused back. Even his legs protest his sudden transition to standing from sitting hunched over the pile of sticks he’s spent the past however-long organizing into various words, from _‘Hello’_ to the first three words of _‘Where the fuck are you guys.’_

He would swear before a grand jury that the _‘fuck’_ was an indispensable part of that particular message.

“He is!” Mike announces. It takes the combined efforts of Bill, Audra _and_ Ben to get him upright without jostling his injury too much.

“Says the guy who single-handedly doubled his readership in our hometown,” Richie says. “Or did you put that display up in the library because you knew we were coming?”

“They’re very popular books!” Mike defends himself, while Eddie wonders if he just failed to notice a display like that somewhere in their Derry library. The one here might just be a friendlier place; he’d prefer it if none of his friends went back there, though, what with the lingering evidence of a violent scuffle. Better to leave it for plan Y, a last-ditch effort before he starts trying to talk everyone into making a second excursion into the sewers.

He’ll do that too, though, if it’ll get him home to his Losers.

-*-

The Barrens look different. The greenery, that is – and Eddie can’t describe how, or why, but that unnerves him a little. They’re still in Maine, so it should look the same, right? 

“The door’s around here somewhere,” Ben is saying, and Richie says, “Jesus, dude, we were here like literally yesterday, how’d you lose it already –” 

“I was a little distracted, man,” Ben says, exasperated, and Eddie is starting to feel a little adrift again, watching all of them interact like this. It’s just like _his_ Losers, but he knows how he fits with his Losers, and if he ever doesn’t, Richie always seems to sense it and swoops in to get him in a playful headlock. That’s how it was when they were kids, and that’s how it was immediately when they met again, which is amazing in its own way.

Eddie thinks sometimes that his life has stalled-out, that he’ll continue to be alone and listless, at least until...until, well, he’s not living with his mother anymore. So it was nice, seeing everyone again. They didn’t treat him like he’s failed to grow up, even though he kind of has.

He wonders if maybe that’s what this Richie thinks, now that he knows Eddie’s unmarried. He can feel himself frowning and tries to fight it, then is luckily rescued as Ben...lifts up a slab of the earth?

“There we go!” Beverly cheers, clapping Ben on the back. He blushes a little. It makes Eddie smile despite his own darker thoughts; he thinks it’s kind of cute that both sets of Bens and Beverlys found each other again.

“You know, it really is kinda crazy that you managed to build this thing, Ben,” Mike says. “At the time we didn’t appreciate it enough.”  
“Hey, I appreciated it!” Richie says defensively. “I know Eddie was always bitching about like, safety regulations and shit, but he liked it too. Uh.” He stops and looks back at Eddie. Eddie just looks back, because he doesn’t know what to say. He’s not going to pretend to know what Richie’s talking about.

“It was n-nice to have somewhere safe to go,” Bill says. “Should we go in? Where would the other Losers put a message?” 

“Regardless of where _they_ put it, where are we gonna see it?” Mike muses. “Can’t hurt to go in, though.” 

Eddie watches Mike climb down the little latter into the dark space beneath. Good Lord, that _is_ impressive. 

Ben’s still standing at the door with Beverly while Bill and Richie follow Mike down, like he’s waiting for everyone to go first. 

“You built this as a kid?” Eddie says. “That’s really impressive. I bet if the Ben I knew heard about it he’d be jealous, he always wanted bigger projects.” 

Ben smiles at him, looking excited that Eddie’s decided to talk to him. He’s not meant to be so cagey, but he really _doesn’t_ know these people and they don’t know him, but...maybe he can learn. It’s a chance at some insight, right? He’s looking at a Ben that’s different from his, but he’s still a Ben that might’ve been. A possibility in time.

“Oh, it’s not as cool as it looks,” Ben says. He’s a little more earnest, more demure, than the man Eddie is familiar with. “The space was already dug out. I put up the beams to reinforce it, though.”

“And the door,” Beverly adds. She’s looking up at Ben with one eyebrow cocked up, a little smile on her face. Sweet as a dessert wine after a nice dinner. “It’s got hinges!” 

“Yeah,” Ben says, and he smiles back at her like Eddie isn’t there. “I did make the door, too.” 

Eddie resists the urge to clear his throat. They deserve this happiness, even if it makes him feel tight in the chest. He presses a hand over his heart, pushing at his chest just for the sensation of it. 

“Eddie?” Ben says. When he looks up, they’re both watching him now instead of each other. “Are you okay?” 

“Oh,” Eddie says. “Yeah, just – yeah. I’m fine.”

“If you need an inhaler, we can get one from the pharmacy in town,” Beverly says, very kindly. “Eddie – the other one – already sent his prescription over.” 

Well, _that’s_ an embarrassing thing to have in common. 

“Thanks, but I’m really okay,” Eddie says. “I wouldn’t know how to use a modern one, anyway.” 

Ben looks like he wants to say something, but he glances at Beverly and she just nods a little. “Okay, Eddie,” she says, and he feels his ears go pink.

He takes a step towards the door. “I’m going down,” he says, softly, and when he arrives at the bottom of the old ladder, they both follow him down. 

Bill and Mike are both peering at the walls, presumably searching for clues. Richie, on the other hand, is sprawled out on the dirty floor, head tilted back and eyes closed.

“Sorry squad, but we’re not gonna find anything. The time travel machinations are probably too complex.”

“Still worth a shot, Rich,” Beverly says. “No luck yet?”

“We don’t really know where to look,” Mike admits. “But yeah. No dice.” 

“I’m telling you!” Richie says. “Time travel!”

“It’s not time travel,” Eddie says, and then grimaces when everyone looks at him. He’s kind of just wanted to be part of the conversation. “I mean,” he says, because apparently they’re waiting. “It’s a dimensional swap or something. Or I’d still be out there, just older.” 

“Exactly!” Mike says, sounding pleased. “That’s why I think the exact place doesn’t matter. We aren’t actually looking for a message Eddie’s leaving us in the past, it’s more like the two planes of existence we exist on are – are merging or something.” 

“Huh,” Bill says. The other Losers mostly look mildly nonplussed. 

“Two Eddies at the same time would be fun,” Richie says. “But also I’m pretty sure if you two ever met it would end in...not disaster per se, but, uh –” 

Beverly laughs. “Oh my God. Eddie would be so chaotic! He’d combust.” 

“I guess he probably wouldn’t like me very much,” Eddie says. He doesn’t blame the other man for that; it can’t be fun to meet a failed version of yourself. 

“Oh, no, that’s not what we mean –” Beverly says, raising a gentle hand towards him. He thinks maybe someone’s finally going to touch him, but he’s too far away and she drops her hand. 

“Yeah,” Richie says, cutting her off. “Who wouldn’t like _you,_ man? You’re great. Cute little sweater vests and glasses and all. It’s just like what he wrote in the note, about the me in 1990. Our Eddie is just like…”

Richie and Beverly make a face at each other. Beverly shrugs.

“He’s a bitch,” Richie decides. He doesn’t say it as an insult, though; he’s grinning widely. “Like. He just gets off on arguing, I don’t know, he’d definitely try to fight you –”

“That's how he shows affection, though –” Beverly says, and honestly Eddie has no idea what to make of this. 

“I’m pretty sure if they ever met it’d be because the walls between dimensions were breaking down.” They all turn to Mike, who shrugs. “You know...bad.”

“Way to kill the mood, Mikey,” Richie says, rolling his eyes. 

“I’m just saying!” 

“We already _saw_ the other guys, though, right? And nothing happened.” 

Eddie frowns, and steps a little closer to the group. “It was only Richie. My Richie, I mean. I didn’t see myself.” Wait, would he actually know if – “Although I guess I don’t know what he looks like, so maybe I could’ve –” 

“Oh shit, yeah,” Richie says. He sits up a little straighter and pulls his telephone out of his pocket. “It’s so weird, you actually look basically nothing like him. Anyone have a picture?” He’s swiping his fingertips across the screen of the phone, doing who-knows-what. 

“I do,” Mike says, leaning down to show Richie his own phone. 

“Very stalkerish,” Richie says. “But convenient in this exact scenario.”

“Where is that picture even from?” Beverly says, leaning into their little huddle.

“His LinkedIn,” Mike says, nonsensically. 

“Explains why he looks fucking miserable,” Richie says. “He was thinking about financial risks or whatever the fuck.” 

“Uh,” Eddie says. Everyone stares up at him again.

“Here, Eddie,” Mike says, kindly. He holds the telephone out so Eddie can take it, and he does, awkwardly, unsure how to hold it. “That’s the Eddie we’re familiar with.” 

Eddie has to hold the phone sort of close and tilt it a little. It’s weird to look at a picture on the small little screen, like a tiny television. 

Well, this explains why the Losers struggled to recognize him. They really don’t look anything alike; the other Eddie has dark hair and eyes, with a strong brow, a square jaw, and a serious frown. He’s not wearing glasses, either. 

“Huh,” Eddie says. He’s looking for some small bit of familiarity, anything at all. They’re both white? But it’d be pretty weird if they weren’t? They both have brown eyes and kind of thin lips. Eddie runs a nervous hand through his hair; he’d never wear it plastered back like this man’s. 

“He doesn’t look like me,” is all he can say, finally. He offers Mike his phone back, and Mike smiles gently at him as he takes it. It’s odd to think – presumably none of his Losers have any photos of him, so the other Eddie doesn’t know what _he_ looks like. What would he think if he did? 

“Do we all look different, Eddie?” Beverly says. When he looks up at her, she’s watching him closely, and he flushes, feeling very perceived. 

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “So, you know, it makes sense we don’t resemble each other. The Beverly I grew up with has brown hair, actually.” 

“Oh, wow,” Beverly laughs, and runs a hand through her pretty red curls. “Well, I’m pretty attached to my hair, so I’m glad I got this.” 

Ben’s smiling softly at her as she says it. Eddie watches him watch her hand as it dips into the strands of her hair. 

“Ben, you’ve got darker hair and a fuller beard,” he says, turning to all of them. “Mike, you’re a little shorter and your hair is graying. Bill…” he laughs a little, and everyone’s staring at him. “You have a ponytail. It’s really funny.” 

“Oh my God,” Richie says, and Eddie watches his head tilt back as he laughs. “Oh my _God!_ Really?” He looks like he’s just been given a gift.

Eddie shouldn’t laugh when his Bill isn’t even there to defend himself, but it’s just that it _is_ really funny, and he likes to see Richie laugh, too. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, grinning. “He’s, uh, he’s a little taller, and he wears glasses, but the big thing is the ponytail, it was so unexpected –” 

“God I bet it looks horrible –”

“He ties it back with a bit of twine,” Eddie says, and he’s laughing way too hard, and it’s so mean, but, well – 

“I’m r-right _here_ you know,” Bill says, sounding pained, and Richie starts laughing all over again.

“Sorry, Big Bill,” he says, hands clasped in front of him, eyes wide in faux-placation. “We’re ever so sorry. Say, have you ever considered growing your hair out?”

“If I say yes, you’ll never let me forget it,” Bill says, and Richie says, “Okay but you saying that is literally the same as saying yes, so…”

“ _Ugh,_ ” Bill says, and Eddie grins as everyone laughs, Beverly with one hand tilted over her mouth, Ben shy and just grinning, Richie loudly and expressively, Mike trying not to out of kindness to Bill – it’s all so _charming,_ and it reminds him of his own friends but it’s also so uniquely _them._

“Okay, okay,” Richie says, still grinning. “Sorry, Bill, we’ll leave you alone. Anyway, Eds, what do I look like?”

Eddie is tossed a little off-kilter by ‘Eds’, the sweet nickname that Richie clearly uses for his own Eddie. He bites his lip. 

“You look pretty different, too, Richie,” he says. “His hair is a lighter brown and he styles it completely differently. He doesn’t wear his glasses anymore, he’s got contacts instead. Uh...he’s taller, and he’s got a mustache.” 

Richie stares at him for a moment, wide-eyed. Behind him, Beverly giggles.

“Sorry,” she says. “Really, though? A mustache?” 

“It’s fashionable,” Eddie defends, even though it isn’t particularly. “Well...you know how Richie is. He likes bold statements.” 

“Do I?” Richie says. He’s looking at Eddie with one eyebrow cocked. 

“Uhhh,” Eddie says. “Well. My Richie, I guess.” 

Richie smiles at him. “Can’t believe he’s taller than me – I’m a little offended. And I’ve never been able to manage contacts, so you know what? I’m jealous, actually.” 

“Oh, _please_ don’t grow a mustache to compensate,” Beverly says, digging her elbow into Richie’s side from where she’s sat down beside him. 

“I probably couldn’t pull it off,” Richie says. “Guess I’m just not as cool as that other guy, huh?” 

Eddie’s blushing, and he’d pretend he doesn’t know why, but well...he does. Is his fondness for Richie really so obvious? 

“You’re pretty cool in your own way,” he says to Richie, and offers him up an earnest smile. Richie smiles back, and Eddie feels good that the tension that’s existed between them since this morning has seemingly passed. 

“So,” Bill says, eventually. “We haven’t...seen anything.” 

“It could be that there’s nothing to see,” Mike says. “Because of the specific ways the dimensions lined up, or whatever. We know it’s worked before, but we don’t know _why –_ ”

“Kinda shitty, though,” Richie says. “We came all the way here, man. And we followed the note that the other Losers left.” 

“It can’t work every time,” Mike says, and his voice is quiet but forceful. Eddie watches them both go back and forth, feeling like he’s maybe missing something. 

“Yeah,” Ben says, cutting in the tension that apparently exists here. “No, we get that. We’ve just been here a while –”  
“So what, you just wanna give up?” Richie snaps.

“I didn’t say that,” Ben says. “Richie, c’mon.”

“Don’t ‘c’mon’ me! It’s Eddie we’re talking about! And we gotta get this guy –” he sweeps an expressive hand towards Eddie – “back where he belongs. It’s only fair.” 

Eddie chews his lower lip. Well, this is awkward. He never wanted to get in the middle of any pre-existing tension in the group, but it seems that might be where he’s fallen regardless of his wishes. 

“Maybe this one is just not working out,” he says, trying for comfort. “But that doesn't mean it can’t work again. I mean, we’ve had...what, three successes, right? The hospital, my room at the inn, and the theater. One misstep doesn’t change that.”

Richie turns and stares at him; his gaze piercing. 

“You really think that?”

Eddie doesn’t know what to say. “Yeah?” he says, eventually. “What am I supposed to say? I can’t...I can’t give up hope.”

Richie’s still looking at him, and Eddie can’t read his expression in the dim light. 

“Alright,” Richie says, eventually. “Yeah, fair enough. We’ve all outgrown this place, anyway. My back hurts, I need a proper chair, dammit.” 

“You’re so old,” Beverly says, leaning against his shoulder. 

“We’re the same age!”

“I’m young at heart,” Beverly says, and Richie rolls his eyes so obviously that Eddie can see it from where he’s standing off to the distance. 

Eddie ignores the rest of the conversation – _Yeah, yeah, well we can’t all be fucking gorgeous and retain our youthful glow – Aw, Rich, you think I glow?_ – to turn towards Mike, because he’s the only one still crouched in the dark corner of the clubhouse, looking over a worn, peeling collection of posters pinned up to the walls. 

“Find anything?” Eddie says, and Mike flinches back a little.

“Oh,” he says, and he doesn’t straighten to his full height – Eddie’s not sure that he could actually do that without hitting his head on a ceiling beam – but he turns towards Eddie and brings himself closer to Eddie’s eye-level. “I...haven’t seen anything, not once this whole time. I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” Eddie says, trying to keep his voice clear and earnest. “I mean it, one failure doesn’t mean we should give up, right?”

“Oh, I agree,” Mike says, eagerly. Eddie can see Bill watching them both and presumably listening, but everyone else is occupied with each other. “I’m thinking that maybe this was just too much of a stretch? Like, even if the other set of Losers _is_ leaving a message, how are we even gonna find it? The hospital and the Derry Inn or the Town House – their names are different but they fulfill the exact same function in both universes, right? So it’s a one-to-one comparison...and I think maybe this isn’t.” He finishes his speech with an awkward grin, like he’s just realized how much he said. 

“Th-that makes sense, Mikey,” Bill says, and Mike turns to face him. “It’s like…the physical location matters, but I think at this point we’ve established that it’s m-more than that, too. Like...the emotional significance has to be similar? That sounds kind of ridiculous, but…” 

“It doesn’t sound ridiculous,” Mike says. “It sounds like something that would happen in one of your books. And I think it makes sense.” Okay, so this Mike is a William Denbrough fan, too, that’s cute. 

“So you two think we should give up, too,” Eddie says, because, well, someone’s got to keep this team on task – although that’s sort of starting to seem like an impossible goal. 

“It’s not giving up to go eat dinner,” Mike says, “is it?” 

And, well, Eddie supposes that he’s right. “I guess,” he says. “Sorry for making you all stick around so long.”

“You didn’t make us do anything we weren’t willing to do for a friend,” Mike says, very kindly, and then he and Bill are rallying the rest of the Losers into action, and they’re climbing up out of the clubhouse and back into the light. 

-*-

Eddie wishes he could appreciate this group’s earnest efforts to cheer him up – initially by trying to pique his interest with vignettes about their own childhood misadventures and twenty-seven years apart, and then with overly enthusiastic suggestions for restaurants to go to for dinner. Jade of the Orient ranks somewhere around plan S or T for “places Eddie would be willing to go looking for interdimensional portals,” but he’s still blindsided by the realization that even _that_ place doesn’t exist here, at least not with that name. He doesn’t recognize any of the restaurant names anyone lists off, even if some of them do sound like stand-ins that are similar enough to make everything feel just a little surreal. 

That becomes his unspoken excuse for asking them to drop him off in front of the Inn. Bill promises to drop by later with carryout from some family restaurant; comfort food _does_ sound pretty appealing right about now, so Eddie nods his thanks before turning to plod his way up to his borrowed room.

He slips his hand through a crack in the door to flick the light on before he sets foot inside, and then he does the same in the bathroom. Maybe it’s not so bad, not having the shower; no curtain means one less place for intruders to hide. 

Better safe than sorry, though; Eddie flips the hamper lid open on his way in and leaves it like that.

He remembers that he still doesn’t have a toothbrush, goddammit, and if they had _cell phones_ he could text out a polite request for one, problem solved.

He’s still debating walking down to ask the front desk for a spare when he realizes that something _is_ off in here; the note he left this morning is back where he left it. 

Only it isn’t, because he didn’t write _nearly_ that much; the little paper is crammed full of cleanly-formed, evenly-spaced letters, and when he rips it off the mirror he finds the bottom signed _‘Eddie Kaspbrak.’_

“How’s that for surreal,” he mutters to himself.

Eddie can feel his pulse in the tips of his fingers, thudding against the slip of paper. A laugh slips past his lips when he gets to the part about Richie. Fine. Irreverent. Worried. He’s probably scandalizing this poor guy, the way he _writes –_ he’s so polite, it’s no wonder his friends don’t seem to know what to do with Eddie.

Truth be told, Eddie is more than a little jealous. But he’s proud, too. Good hands – fucking _obviously._ When he thinks of it like that, it’s not hard to understand this other Eddie’s defense of Mustache Richie. 

Maybe it’s just because he – because someone who could have been him, who probably smiled writing “I can handle a little blood,” because another Eddie Kaspbrak wrote it like it was as simple as not worrying about a dirty bathroom. Maybe there’s no real, concrete reason to, but Eddie finds a lot of comfort in that promise. 

_‘We can fix this.’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **fluffifullness:** *Ephraim Winslow voice* i want a goddamned cell phone! if I had a cell phone... i could fuck it
> 
>  **bentleys:** I'm actually one of the five people on Earth who supports Bill's ponytail but Eddie can't help being gay and judgmental so RIP to Bill
> 
>  **fluffifullness:** And I am not one of those five people


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **sinchronicity:** Hey guys it is I, 'bentleys', just recently changed my name on here! This story continues to be written by the same two people, lmao. Also: this chapter and the next were originally going to be one chapter that we decided to split, so we've expanded the chapter estimate to reflect that. 
> 
> **Fluffifullness:** This chapter is also more heavily co-written than previous ones, so the "I write 2016 character POV's and sinchronicity writes 1990 character POV's" rule doesn't apply as much here. Lowkey we were effectively roleplaying some parts out lol. Also, apologies for the long, long wait and HAPPY PRIDE MONTH! We _just_ made it!

The morning starts off – in Richie’s estimation – pretty hopefully, with the discovery of a new note. It’s from the whole gang this time, not just Spaghetti, but Richie still takes the slip of hotel stationary in his hands, thinking of blond curls and a shockingly easy smile.

“So,” he says to the Eddie he’s actually with, in an attempt at ‘companionable,’ “the other crew thinks it’s about emotional resonance, huh?” 

“They’re desperate,” Eddie says. “Like we are. Probably just… grasping at straws.”

Well, that’s a helluva thing to hear from a guy who’s received two notes in as many days from another dimension. Richie watches him with no small amount of curiosity. It’s probably the ‘two days’ that’s getting to him. Richie won’t deny that the length of time is getting kinda freaky – he’s now known _this_ Eddie as an adult longer than he knew _his_ Eddie as an adult. 

“Okay,” Richie says. “That’s – a bit of a downer. But it’s fine, Fettuccine. We can work with their idea.” 

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie says, but Richie can tell there’s no real heart in it. 

“C’mon,” Richie says, leaving the hornet’s nest temporarily alone, “Let’s talk. I’ve got some ideas about where we should try next, okay?”

He pops his head in to tell Beverly and Ben where they’re headed so that they don’t think that Eddie and Richie have gone and died, since that sure is something members of the Losers’ Club have proven themselves capable of in the past few days. 

He can’t think about that. “Me and Spaghetti the Second are taking a walk,” he tells Bev, and then makes a promise he’s not actually sure he can keep – “When we get back, we’ll have a new destination for our motley crew.” 

“Okay,” Ben says, from the breakfast table. Richie is sure that he’s very busy like, buttering Beverly’s toast for her, or something. “Have fun?”

Bev doesn’t say anything, but she gives him an oddly pointed look, her lips pulled tight and her brow furrowed. Richie elects to ignore that; he can’t guess at whatever it is that she thinks she knows. 

“Back in forty,” Richie says, because it can’t take _that_ long to either reach an understanding or start brawling in the street. 

“We’ll send search parties out if you’re not,” Ben says, and he’s smiling, and Richie laughs, and both of them know that it’s not _really_ a joke. 

“So where are we going, exactly?” 

“Dunno,” Richie says, and kicks at a pebble with a booted toe. Eddie is mostly avoiding looking at him, which is a shame seeing as Richie broke out his second windbreaker, since Eddie liked the first one so much. It’s black with loud, bright stripes of color, and Eddie hasn’t so much as told him it looks hideous yet. 

“No destination in mind,” Richie says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Just a goal.” 

“Find an ‘emotionally resonant’ common place?” 

“That’s the one.” Richie _does_ have a destination of his own planned, though, and after a few minutes of easy strolling they’ve reached the old memorial park with its little bird fountain and scattered benches. It’s kind of shittier than Richie remembers, but then again maybe he’s just seen nicer parks since. 

This isn’t where he’d been planning on having this conversation with _his_ Eddie. But then he hadn’t really had a plan there, at all, just some self-serving imaginings that became a lot more real when Eddie shared a certain secret deep down in the city sewers. 

Richie pulls a hand across his own face. He’s already tired and he hasn’t even started talking yet. The whole walk over he kept glancing at Eddie out of the corner of his eye, and Eddie’s brow was pulled down tight, his lips pinched shut, every time.

It’s a dangerous story, the one he’s about to tell. And Eddie is...well, he’s married, so he may in fact be a heterosexual, unlike some other Eddies Richie could name. Richie’s the worst person in the world to equate marrying a woman to being attracted to one, but Eddie is forty goddamn years old so he’s either _actually_ into his wife or he’s probably utterly fucking miserable. 

_The thing is he does kinda seem a little miserable._

But Eddie’s sexuality isn’t the point right now. Well, it _is_ , but Richie’s a grown man and also six foot four and he can take care of himself.

“Wow, this is a pretty shit park,” Eddie says, and Richie is charmed into laughter.

“Isn’t it? I remember it looking better, but I suppose those were the delusional eyes of a child.” 

The corner of Eddie’s mouth twitches up just the tiniest of movements. “We have parks in my Derry, but I don’t know how attached I was to any of them.” 

“Ah,” Richie says, wagging a finger in the air despite the fact that Eddie isn’t looking at him, “me neither, my good man. This is neutral ground.” 

“Neutral ground for what?” Eddie says, and out of nowhere he looks all annoyed. “For you to wheedle more personal details out of me?” 

“Relax,” Richie says, because that’s probably his number one wish for this angry little man. “Nah, I’m not gonna ask about your wifey.” Although God knows he wants to. 

_“Fuck you,”_ Eddie says, like a reflex. “Then what, man?” he adds, and there’s barely any venom in it. Even Eddieccine gets tired. 

“Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” Richie says. “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.” He sits on the dirty old bench in front of the fountain and is not surprised when Eddie fails to join him. “You’re married; I’m not, and there’s a reason for it.” He gets halfway through a dramatic pause and decides to just bite the bullet. “I’m a homosexual. Now we both know something personal about each other.” He doesn’t look up at Eddie as he says it. 

“What?” Eddie says, and Richie is already regretting this a little bit. 

“You know,” he says, keeping his tone light. “Homosexual; gay; a Kinsey 6? ‘I really tried it with girls but it didn’t stick?’”

“I don’t remember the numbers on the Kinsey Scale,” Eddie says mechanically. 

“There’s six,” Richie says, because there’s six. 

“Oh.” He joins Richie on the bench – if leaving as much space as physically possible between them counts as ‘joining’ him – clasps and unclasps his hands in his lap and slowly folds in on himself like a melting snowman. “Uh.”

“Don’t hurt yourself trying to be nice about it.”

Eddie springs upright like a Jack-in-the-box, throwing his hands up in frustration. “Yeah, okay, let me just google ‘what to say when someone you barely know comes out to you!’”

Oh, he’s broken him. They’re gonna have to send him back to his Losers speaking gibberish every other word. _Google._

“Well, so-rry,” Richie says. “I wasn’t actually _asking_ for anything. This is just like, a courtesy, I’m trying to be fucking nice to you.” 

Eddie stares gape-mouthed, then finally looks somewhat contrite. “Okay – thank you? It must, uh… it must be hard being out in the 90s.”

 _Jesus H Christ_. Richie considers just getting up and walking away, but where the Hell would he go? Eddie is _his_ responsibility, and he does actually take that seriously, and it _was_ his choice to have this – very stupid, apparently – conversation. 

“Nah,” he says, forcing his voice to stay light even as his hands ball up into fists against his will. “It’s as easy as pie. Jesus, man, is everyone in the future as bad at this as you are?”

“What? I don’t – no. No. It – it gets better?” He says that like he’s seizing on some stock phrase Richie’s never heard. “I mean most people are probably better at this than… well, maybe I’d fucking know what to say if it was one of _my_ friends, but what? ‘I support you?’ You’re fucking annoying. I don’t support you at all. Not because you’re gay, though.”

Some of the tension in Richie’s chest dissipates as he laughs out loud. “Christ, Spaghetti. Thanks for that.”  
 _“Not_ my name.” 

“Yeah, I know,” Richie says. He stretches, casual, and interlaces his fingers behind his head. “Is it, though? Really?” 

“What?” 

“Better. Is it – I mean, y’know – is there, like, a cure?” 

“What, to – to being _gay?”_

Richie blinks. Well, that’s...a thing to say. His mind is swirling with new information, and he continues to not know what to make of this man – and everything he’s learning is just making that more complex, frankly – 

He doesn’t have time for this. He has to _know._

“To AIDS,” he says. “Jesus, Eddie.” 

“Shit,” Eddie mutters. “Duh. I’m an asshole.”

“Don’t tell me that’s news to you.” He’s glancing sidelong at Eddie, trying to keep eyes on him, but Eddie’s so damn fidgety that it’s really not helping him stay calm at all.

“No.” Eddie’s still muttering, and his hands are back to clasping and unclasping, then tugging at his _very_ fashionable new pants. “And also… no. But before you freak out, that’s better too. I’ve seen people call it ‘a life sentence not a death sentence.’ It’s still fucking _scary,_ but not… like it was. Is,” he corrects, glancing sidelong at Richie. “I actually know a little more about this, if you want…?”

Richie’s heart is going wild in his chest. Of _course_ he wants, Jesus. “Yeah?” He says. He’s tried to keep his voice light and unbothered this whole time, but boy is he failing now. “Yeah,” he tries to say it more solidly the second time. “I wanna know anything ya got. The 21st century is a helluva thing, I'm sure.”

Eddie purses his lips at that, but he doesn’t speak right away. When he does, he says, “I don’t know how much I should tell you. It’s your future…”

“Don’t sprout morals on me now,” Richie says, annoyed. At some point in the last several minutes the nervous energy in his body has burst, and he drops his arms; placing one hand on his knee to stop it bouncing. Eddie glances his way, but doesn’t comment. 

“The shit that I’m talking about happens over two decades from now, Richie,” Eddie says. “I just –” 

“So does it get ‘better’ or not?” It’s hard to imagine _better._ Even in the space-man future. 

“Fuck off. I haven’t lied… there’s new medications, more effective than AZT –” Eddie cuts himself off; chews his bottom lip. Richie watches this out of the corner of his eyes, trying to avoid direct eye-contact. They’re like two skittish animals trying to avoid a fight. Yikes. 

“It’s not a _cure,_ ” Eddie says eventually. Quietly; tensely. “It’s preventative. But it’s safer, now, than it was – than it is. I guess. For you.” 

Richie doesn’t know what to say to that. The hand pressing on his leg clamps tighter, his fingertips digging into the muscle of his thigh. Safe; _safer_ – decades away – what’s he supposed to _do_ with that? 

Richie stands up. He takes a step or two away from the bench, trying to fight off the nervous energy that just about makes him want to start sprinting away.

“Richie?” Eddie says. There’s a nervous tone to his voice; even Richie can recognize that much.

“That’s good,” Richie hears himself say, but it’s happening to him again – that thing that his head does sometimes, where it feels like his mind comes detached from the rest of him and floats away. 

“Are you okay?” 

He’s okay. He’s not safe, he’s lucky; a reckless idiot who won’t press about a condom if the other guy doesn’t wanna use one. He knows it’s stupid and cowardly and it’s why he hasn’t slept with anyone in a while now; long lonely months of being spooked away from gay bars and pride parades and other men in general. But. He’s _okay._ He’s been tested. 

“I’m fine, Spaghetti Man,” Richie says, and his voice comes out nearly as light as he hoped it would. “Peachy keen. Thanks for telling me.” Richie presses a hand against his own forehead; he bites his tongue hard enough that the shock of pain makes his mind start back for his body. 

When he looks back over to the bench, Eddie’s staring at him. His lips are slightly parted, near to speech, and there’s a deep furrow to his brow.

“What?”

“You could get married,” Eddie says, abruptly, and Richie is really either gonna pull his hair out or start crying, and neither of those things seems particularly appealing right now.

“Thanks, man,” he says. “I think it was already implied that I tried that. A couple of times, even. For some reason women don’t like it when they can tell you’re feigning attraction to them – who knew, right?” 

Eddie looks briefly shocked, and then his frown turns defensive. “No, I – God, Richie, you’re so – that’s not what I mean!” 

Eddie’s eyes are sharp; his brows serious. Richie wanders back closer to the bench, but he doesn’t sit – he wants to stay ready to flee, maybe. 

“To a man,” Eddie says. “To a – in the future. That’s a thing. Gay marriage.” 

Richie knows this old queen back in L.A. named Melvin. He’s got a lovely home in the hills, he drives a nice fancy car, and he near-exclusively calls the man he lives with “hubby,” like a parody of a middle-aged straight woman. It’s a funny bit, but they’re sweet. They wear matching rings, and Jared – the ‘hubby’ in question – likes to pinch Richie’s cheeks, like he’s a little kid. 

“Okay?” he says to Eddie. If this is Eddie’s idea of a lesson on how to get okay with being bent, he should workshop it a little more.

Eddie throws his hands into the air in a gesture Richie has come to be pretty fond of.

“Legally!” Eddie says. “You could get married, _legally_ , to another man. It’s – it’s the same, as a man and a woman, now.” 

And, _Oh_ , because Richie does not know what to say to that. There’s no way it can actually be, like, true. He laughs, but even as he does he can hear how high and forced it is. 

“I,” Eddie says, then cuts himself off. He stares furiously at his hands and Richie watches him do it. 

“Shit, Richie,” he says, eventually. “I’m trying, okay? I’m not lying to you. It took a long time, a really long time – you know, with state versus federal law and all that –” That’s what catches in Richie’s brain, that right there, because somehow making about states’-rights-nonsense makes it seem closer to real. It’s not like it’s some utterly unheard of thing – he knows there’s people who want legalized marriage, who’d fight for it. 

“But it’s,” Eddie’s still talking. “You know, people were campaigning because they wanted legal rights to each other, they want their relationship protected if they have kids together, if one of them dies, or gets ill –” and obviously Richie’s heard about _that_ , having the worst happen and then not even being able to mourn properly because his mother hates you and doesn’t want you at the funeral and you weren’t allowed in the hospital room anyway. It’s not – it’s not something Richie’s ever seen up close, but everyone’s heard the talk, the whispers. 

_So maybe it is different, then,_ he thinks without even really intending to. Better medicine. Better optics. Fucking _legal marriage._ It really just might be a brave new world. 

Richie lets himself imagine it, for a moment. If not for himself, then for – Eddie, his Eddie. Maybe in this future of Falseghetti’s there’s a place for a man like Eddie Kaspbrak; a place where it would be all right for him to be the man Richie has always known him to be: kind and brave and a little peevish and also gorgeous, incredible, the best person Richie’s ever known. And he could love another man, be loved by him in return, and it would be okay, it’d even be legal. 

It’s not that legality means _everything_ , Richie knows that, obviously, but it does mean _something_. There is a part of him that wants only for Eddie to be safe. There is a part of him that has only ever wanted that. 

But then there’s _this_ Eddie: this man that maybe Richie doesn’t fully know yet but who – well – Richie doesn’t wanna assume shit but clearly this whole conversation has the other man on edge, for whatever reason that might be. Apparently it’s not all sunshine and roses in the future, even with all that’s changed.

He misses his Eddie. Does Eddie miss him? He can’t decide whether or not it’s self-serving to hope that he does. They’re close; they’ve always been close. 

“Richie?” Eddie says, and Richie realizes belatedly that he’s been staring down at his own shoes for like, a solid minute or two. 

“Yeah?” he says. Makes himself say. “Guess you figured some shit out in the future, then. It’s good to hear.” 

“Well, _I_ haven’t.” Before Richie can even begin to process that, Eddie’s fluttering hands disappear into his pockets as he stands and hisses, “Never mind.”

Richie could be looking into a mirror, the way the poor guy visibly braces himself for an impact he definitely isn’t prepared to weather. He takes one look at him and shrugs, faux-nonchalant. “Mind what?”

Eddie’s hands re-emerge from the pockets with a matching shrug that runs like a current from his sagging shoulders on down; Richie doesn’t know if it looks like he’s just shouldered a burden or shaken one off, but he does know he’s said something right or… not-wrong enough that he doesn’t even flinch when Eddie tentatively closes the distance between them.

“Oh, a hug?” Richie says, half-amused, half-dumbstruck. 

“Yeah, we still call them that in the future.”

Richie’s laughter catches in his throat when Eddie’s extremely tentative grip on him suddenly becomes vice-like. A whole lot of weight sways right into him, nearly knocks him off his feet so that he has to take a step back to avoid actually losing his balance.

“Whoa,” he starts to say, “do you also try to bowl people over every time you–”

He blinks, and instead of Feddieccine’s dark, slicked-back hair he sees blonde, and glasses, and— “Eddie.”

“Not this _again,”_ his Eddie hisses, making fists of Richie’s windbreaker even after he’s righted himself. “What the hell was – _Richie?”_ His voice is so _familiar,_ but then, everything about him is – he feels like _home –_

“Hey… You look – uh, no spacesuit?”

Eddie – the real Eddie, Spagghedward, if you will, and you probably won’t – laughs and hugs him again, proper-like this time. “Nice windbreaker.”

“Oh, you come tripping into me in the middle of this park and the first thing you do is poke fun at my clothes,” Richie laughs, not offended in the slightest. There’re little blossoms of joy blooming, bright and vibrant, in his mind. “The other guy didn’t even bat an eye about it.”

“Richie,” Eddie chides, “you better not have been antagonizing him the whole”—

Poof.

Zap. Pow! Bam! Now there’s a gut-punch if Richie’s ever felt one, having Eddie warm and solid in his arms only to feel him slip away again, cut off and replaced with Falseghetti, who looks a lot like someone just ripped the rug out from under him, too.

“Shit,” Richie says, letting Eddie scramble away from him. “I – oh, fuck. Did you –?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and his voice sounds wrong, foreign, after a taste of the proper Eddie’s. “I – yeah. We – switched?” 

Just for a moment. A moment, and then – _there and back again._ Richie doesn’t know how to bring Eddie _home_ , not for good. What are they doing wrong? Hell, what are they doing _right?_ Are the other pair, Eddie and that unknown man who must also call himself Richie, are they also standing in an ugly park having a heart-to-heart? Is that really how this madness works? The other crew seems to think so, and it could be that they’re right. 

“We were back in the Townhouse.”

Huh, or it could be that they’re wrong. Eddie says it like saying it will make it come true again. Richie stares at him like staring will make the right Eddie re-materialize in front of him.

This Eddie doesn’t look at him at all until he suggests that they get cracking on making this thing happen again, but longer. He’s got a few ideas, an empty stomach, and a burning desire to get the hell out of this park, assuming its usefulness is pretty much exhausted one way or another. Plenty of other places to dredge up uncomfortably intense emotions or what have you. 

“Did he…?” Richie gives him a prompting look; Feddieccine scowls at him. “Did he look okay?”

“He wears your clothes better than you,” Richie announces, just to see Eddie bristle at the thought of Spaghetti Man rummaging through _his_ belongings, making something nice out of them, or maybe, God forbid, actually _enjoying_ the impromptu shopping trip. 

“He’s probably not even fucking _wearing_ my clothes! It’s not like _you’d_ know!”

-*-

The second note that Eddie writes disappears just as the first one did, which Eddie is choosing to believe means that it’s...crossing the dimensional strands of energy to reach the other Losers. Or something. He’s not exactly an expert on anything that’s going on here. He frowns, briefly and petulantly, at his reflection in the mirror, before he heads back into Eddie’s room. 

The other Eddie’s telephone is making an incessant buzz on the side-table, vibrating like mad, and Eddie is pretty damn fed-up with it. He doesn’t know how to turn it off, but he prods at the screen, sliding his fingers across it until something changes. 

Suddenly the ring-tone, dull and overwhelmingly loud, cuts off and there’s only the sound of unparseable static. 

“Hello?” Eddie says, aloud, like this is a regular phone call. The etiquette can’t have changed too much, right?

“ _Eddie?!_ ” A frantic voice comes over the line. “Who is this? Why do you have my husband’s phone?”  
 _Ah._ Well, alright then. Eddie doesn’t really know what to say to that. Everything sort of hits him at once: yes, this Eddie is indeed married, but he’s married to – to who? To a woman whose immediate reaction to precarious situations is uncannily familiar to his own mother’s reaction to the same thing? 

His body is going hot-and-cold. Over the tinny speakers of the little futuristic phone, the voice keeps coming – demanding; angry. The woman talking the other Eddie does _not_ like hearing an unfamiliar voice, and Eddie is a little terrified – 

“Is Eddie there? Is he alright? Oh, I _knew_ something like this would happen, I never should’ve let him go –” _Why would you want to go back to that dirty little town?_ his mother asks him, eyes wide and voice sharp, in his memory. She tried to stop him, but she’s dead in this universe, so he’d thought that this Eddie probably had an easier time. But this woman – he knows her name, it’s Myra, Richie said – 

She sounds almost near tears. He doesn’t know her well enough to guess whether those tears are genuine, but his breath has already gone worryingly shaky and he doesn’t wanna hear this anymore, any of this. He can’t even assuage her fears seeing as he’s _not_ the man she’s looking for, but – _Oh,_ Eddie, the other Eddie, he can’t believe they’re both trapped like this. Is there no universe where Eddie Kaspbrak makes it out? 

He can’t listen to her. To _Mrs. Kaspbrak_ berating him and pleading with him in turn; to this woman who just wants her husband back. It’s awful. He pictures his mother’s pinched angry face and he grabs at the telephone, prodding again at the screen. If he can’t make it stop he’s going to storm out of this room and make one of the Losers do it for him, but he’s wheezing pathetically and he’s tired of not knowing things and having Richie make worried eyes at him when the other man thinks Eddie isn’t looking. There’s a red symbol shaped ironically like a landline telephone, and when his thumb hits it, Myra’s voice stops.

Eddie stands in the sudden silence and struggles to get his breathing under control. He takes off his glasses so he can press the heel of his palm against his brow. He rides out the panic and is left standing there trying to figure out what all of this _means._

God. He _married his mother._ He laughs aloud and it sounds harsh and awful. He doesn’t really have enough information, he supposes, to really know if Myra Kaspbrak is the same as Sonia Kaspbrak, but...he can guess. And maybe that would explain the seriousness of the other Eddie’s face, and the whip-strike of anger in him, and the way Richie sounded when he talked about her. _Does_ Richie know what Myra is like? 

And – well. Is the other Eddie gay, too? 

Eddie sighs and sits on his borrowed bed. He doesn’t want to make more assumptions about the man, particularly since so many of his original ones turned out to be incorrect. But it’s sort of strange, right? That one Eddie would be homosexual and the other not? How different _are_ they, really? And shit, turns out the 21st century isn’t too grand if Eddie _did_ feel he had to get married. Eddie himself has never planned on it, even if he admittedly hasn’t planned much of anything. 

He’s still mulling it over when there’s a series of quick, light knocks on his door. He smiles to himself reflexively – he’d bet money that it’s Richie. It’s always Richie who comes up to check on him. 

He opens the door and sure enough, there’s that face that’s starting to become familiar. Richie’s hands are already shoved back in his pockets by the time Eddie can see him, and he’s bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet a little bit, like the restless energy is starting to overwhelm him. Eddie can’t say he doesn’t feel the same.

“Hey, dude, I was wondering if you had thought – uh. Are you okay?” 

Eddie blinks, surprised at being asked. He’s not wearing his glasses, though, he realizes, and it feels like there’s still a sheen of sweat on his face. He probably looks like he’s seen a ghost. If anything, he’s heard one. 

“I,” Eddie says, and a lie is already poised on his lips when he shakes his head a little, decides against it. “No, not really. I need – I need some fresh air. Let’s take a walk?” 

Richie looks somewhat surprised that Eddie admitted anything at all. Perhaps it’s time to open up a little. Eddie snatches up his spectacles and the future telephone from the bed and then strides easily past Richie – _he’s_ getting some air and a chance to stretch his legs, regardless of Richie’s presence or lack-thereof. 

“Oooh-kay,” Richie says. “Sure. You don’t wanna, like, grab some breakfast first or something?” 

“I had an apple,” Eddie says, already half-way down the stairs.

“Not sure that really counts as a meal? But I guess there’s always brunch.” 

Eddie smiles at Richie, gently, as he holds open the door to the Townhouse for him. “You don’t have to come with me, Richie.” 

“I want to,” Richie says, simply, and steps out. Eddie closes the door behind them and walks forward at an easy pace.

“So what happened up there that got you so restless? Any response to our note?”

“Nothing yet,” Eddie says. “I got a phone call, actually.”

“What? Oh, wait, shit, on Eddie’s phone?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and doesn’t realize how much he’s sped up until Richie does a little jog to catch up.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have crazy-long legs?” Richie says. “Also, please tell me that the phone call wasn’t from Myra Kaspbrak. Again.” 

Eddie purses his lips. “It was. And Richie – I didn’t mean to, but I answered it.” 

“Fuck, she totally went off on you, didn’t she? Sorry man, I mean I’ve never met her but I can guess that she’s like, _intense._ ” 

“She’s more than intense, she’s my _mother,_ ” Eddie snaps, and he comes to halt fast enough that Richie almost stumbles trying not to pass him. “When I heard Eddie got married, I thought it was – I don’t know. But she was so angry and I heard my mother in all the things she said. I know that the Sonia Kaspbrak in this universe is dead, and I know I never met her, but – I know my mother. And I know what I heard.” 

“Ah,” Richie says. He’s staring at the ground between them, tossing around a bit of gravel with his foot. Finally he looks up, and frowns. “Well, yeah. Eddie...married his mom. It’s a whole thing. I wasn’t – I mean, I didn’t really know whether I should tell you or not – I mean, I know you’re not married –” 

“Because I live with the _original_ Sonia Kaspbrak,” Eddie says, sharply. “So I didn’t have to replace her.” He sighs. “I’m not angry with you, Richie. That’s...another man’s business, and he doesn’t deserve to have it spread around to some guy from another dimension. I was just surprised. I was...embarrassed when you were taken aback by the fact that I still live with my mother, but I was happy for him...for the other Eddie. I thought he...I don’t know. I thought he got out.” 

“Fuck,” Richie breathes. “Eddie...you don’t have to embarrassed you live with your mom, I get that shit is complicated –”

“But I never _grew up,_ ” Eddie says. “God, even if the other Eddie replaced her at least he did it in the adult way –” 

“Oh, come on –” Richie tries to cut him off but Eddie just keeps talking. This was easier the first time around, with the other Losers – 

“I lied,” he says. “I, to my friends, _my_ friends, I told them I had a girlfriend, because I _always_ lie about – _that_ – but I don’t, I’ve never dated, I’ve never –” _Just spit it out, Spaghetti,_ his mind tells him in Rich Tozier’s voice. The proper one. _His_ Rich.

“I’m,” Eddie says, and contemplates a lot of half-truths he could say instead of this confession. _Oh, this is so stupid._ “Because I’m gay,” he says, before he takes a coward’s way out. “I have never had a girlfriend, or dated, and I will never get married. Because I’m gay. I’m gay, and – I think people know, I think my mother knows, probably, but I could never so much as touch another man, because –”

He stares at the ground beneath them, at Richie’s dirtied sneakers. “Because I don’t know what she’d do,” he says, eventually. “And I’m too scared to find out, I guess.” 

He’s not sure where to go from there, so he just looks up, into Richie’s eyes, enlarged behind his glasses, and he waits for Richie to say something. 

He starts to, and then he stops, and then by the time he actually gets a few words out he’s frowning so hard he could give himself a headache. “But what about – you’re not fucking with me?”

Eddie blinks – he wasn’t expecting _that,_ of all things. “I – no?”

“Okay,” Richie says. He draws a few shaky breaths and looks at Eddie with wild eyes. “Okay. Uh,” and he laughs, only it’s edging on hysterical, “I – me – _fuck,_ not – not here. Can we head back? Just for a minute?”

Eddie crosses his arms over his chest and takes a small defensive step backwards. “To the Townhouse?” 

It might just be the morning light playing tricks on Eddie’s eyes, but he could swear Richie goes pale in response. He raises his hands, too, not to fight but to make a pacifying gesture that doesn’t at all match the panicked-pleading look on his face. “No – I mean yes, and it’s not like that! I just wanna talk, alright? I just… can’t do it out here.”

Eddie frowns, intrigued and almost-pacified by his earnestness. “Okay,” he says, and he tries to lighten his tone, at least a little. “We can do that, yeah. Let’s talk.”

-*-

_“There_ you are, we’ve been trying to get in touch with – uh, is everything okay?”

Richie brushes right past Ben – which is the worst kind of déjà vu, they’ve really gotta stop running into each other every time Richie is mid-gay crisis or he’s gonna develop a Pavlovian panic response to his stupidly handsome face, and/or to the gaudily decorated foyers of historical inns – and at this point he’s just trusting that Eddie is still trailing along behind him, because he doesn’t dare look.

“Yup, everything’s awesome. I’m – we’re just gonna test a theory real quick so why don’t you just hang tight down here…” _Where no one could possibly overhear a word of this._

He doesn’t register Ben’s bewildered response or whatever Eddie does or doesn’t do to greet him in passing. Probably _doesn’t_ – he doesn’t seem like he’s in a particularly friendly mood, himself, which explains why he’s so quick to take the keys from Richie’s shaking hands and unlock the door to his room for him.

Richie’s gotta hand it to him – the last thing he’d be in his shoes is _impatient._

As soon as the door is shut and locked behind them, he autopilots his way into difficult conversation part two before Eddie can demand any answers for himself. He does this with his back still turned, facing the door – blocking it, really. Should he move? He should probably move. Leave Eddie a clear line of escape, at the very fucking least.

“Okay, so, basically I’m thinking, uh, ‘If I tell him I’m gay and _his_ Richie turns out to be gay and he’s – you’re gay, then, uh’” – Richie cuts himself off to make a break for the bed, although maybe the toilet in the bathroom would have been a safer bet. He collapses onto it when his legs _really_ feel like they might give out. “Just warning you in advance I legit might throw up and it’s not contagious so please don’t freak out.”

Eddie crosses the room after him but doesn’t sit down. Richie won’t rule out the possibility that he just wants to be ready to dodge a literal mess. Or he’s considering leaving, which is fair – very fair.

“Do you think you could repeat the first part of that?”

Richie swallows an ominous gagging sensation and then bites out a faux-cheerful, “Don’t think so.”

“Well,” Eddie says, slowly, “I mean – I’m gay, yes. I can tell you that much. And I think you said that you were –” 

Richie nods instead of answering, but apparently that isn’t quite enough to get him another response from this Eddie, who continues to stare him down like a cat watching an animal it’s never seen before, waiting to decide whether or not it poses a threat.

“Yeah, I’m gay,” Richie says, too quiet or too fast. “What about _your_ Richie, is he – would you even know? I mean, no offense, but if he’s _anything_ like me, I guess you _wouldn’t,_ it’s just. Hard to imagine.”

“My Richie?” Eddie says, carefully. “I don’t know that that’s any of your concern?”

Richie raises an eyebrow at him. “This coming from the guy who literally talked on the phone with _my_ Eddie’s wife? I’m basically asking about myself, dude, it’s only _half-_ gossip – _and_ he’s in another universe, so what am I gonna do, do stand-up about how every possible version of me is probably gay?”

Well, actually, there’s a thought, _maybe,_ pending several much more difficult conversations than this one and a big jump in his ability to fake unwavering confidence.

Eddie crosses his arms on his chest and gives a little laugh. “Firstly,” he says, “I didn’t actually intend to pick up Myra’s call, so I’m not sure I can be blamed for it. Secondly – fair enough, but only if you’re as willing to give me details on _your_ Eddie’s personal business, which I’m not sure you are.” 

“I would if I knew any, dude.” He has to look away briefly, at his underpacked bag sitting in one corner of the room – he’ll have to find somewhere to do laundry, himself, if this goes on for too many more days – but he’s past the hardest part of this and didn’t get much of a reaction at all, which is… encouraging. Hell, it’s almost a letdown, after everything. “I guess really I’m asking you about _him,_ too. Don’t even care that much if the other me is happily straight-married with kids.”

He sighs. “But you’re so…” Different. “If you wanna know something specific, ask away.”

Eddie seems to barely react beyond blinking slightly. “You’re not,” he says, voice slow, considering. “Uh. You’re not married. And you – he – doesn’t have kids, no.” Eddie hesitates; looks pensive. “I don’t know, Richie. I –” he bites his lip. “To an extent, I don’t know you – and I was with _him_ for less time than I’ve been with _you_. I guess, I –” And there’s that look on his face again, like there’s something he’s not saying. “He was –” Eddie says, biting the sentence off halfway to consider it more.

“He was good to me, though. Touching me; ruffling my hair; I don’t know, I – he was just so good to me. He seemed – happy, I guess. Comfortable. Around me, at least. I don’t really know what that means for...for what he is, or isn’t.” 

Richie doesn’t think he could call himself that – _happy,_ or at least he definitely doesn’t radiate happiness, _or at least_ he doesn’t do it effortlessly. All the world’s a stage, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe alt-Richie would appreciate that like he probably appreciates being close to his own Eddie, who clearly isn’t in any danger of getting creeped out by it.

“Are you going to throw up?” Eddie says, alarmed.

That makes Richie laugh, which makes his nausea spike so abruptly that he has to bury his mouth in the clammy palm of his hand. Unconvincingly, he says, “Nope.”

The bed dips under Eddie’s cautiously-added weight, which does about as little to soothe Richie’s stomach as Eddie’s awkward attempt at patting his back.

Still, he doesn’t shake him off. Maybe the stilted, far-cry-from-hair-ruffling touch just seems like a good approximation of what his Eddie would be doing if he were here. “Nah,” Richie says again, aloud, “he’d be digging some… anti-nauseal stomach remedy out of his room.”

Realizing belatedly how little sense that makes out of context, he hurriedly adds, “Eds would. I’ve never heard him call being touched ‘good.’ Mostly it’s all wrestling with him.”

Eddie’s mouth quirks up at one side. “Maybe so,” he says. “But, I don’t know – I’m starting to think that he and I aren’t so different, after all.” 

“Dude, you sound like a comic book supervillain,” Richie says, because it’s either that or ‘Not so different _how?’_

Eddie laughs, his hand stuttering in its motion. Richie can feel him hovering just out of reach, so he figures, fuck it, if there’s one thing outside of vaguely hopeful reassurance that he wants out of this, it’s a good old-fashioned hug. 

He sort of means to let go fast, but then Eddie grabs him back, and Richie thinks, _Ah,_ and then he thinks, _Shit._ “Uh – thanks for telling me, by the way, about you.”

Richie’s first instinct is to apologize for the remark when Eddie abruptly rears back. If they’d been sitting any closer to the edge of the bed, he could have fallen right off it. Richie makes a second instinctive grab for him almost as soon as he’s let go, anyway – only the arm his hand closes around is broader than it was a moment ago, and the brown eyes that meet his are bigger, deep-set, and lined with the same shock he feels.

“Holy shit,” Eddie says, giving him a more careful once-over as the initial shock gives way to cautious relief. Considering the conversation he’s just stumbled his way into, Richie has to fight down the immediate, totally irrational impulse to ask him if he overheard anything. 

But he can’t have, because the very next thing he says is, “Dude, have you slept at _all,_ you look like shit”—And then Richie cuts him off with another hug, and for the second time in one day his hug-ee does the opposite of what he expects him to do, and hugs him back.

“Welcome back, Eds.”

“I missed you,” Eddie tells him. “Seriously, Rich, are you okay? I was fucking worried, after the hospital…”

“I’m great.” Or he is _now,_ at any rate.

Eddie makes a displeased grunting noise that presumably translates to something like ‘That sounds like bullshit and you have five minutes before I press the issue again.’ It’s about time he let go of him – he doesn’t, though. Given the circumstances, that only seems fair. Besides, they can’t have him making like an airplane and vanishing into thin air.

“Bev already did all your worrying for you, anyway – so what about you, did you catch any other-dimensional colds? Meet my evil twin?”

Eddie’s grip on him loosens, just a little. He starts to say something.

It’s like a skip in a record, a scratched-up DVD. Half a breath in, half a breath out, and the word “time” in the other Eddie’s voice.

Blonde Eddie trails off when he realizes where he is, his hand slipping across the covers and making a fist as his face falls.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Richie mutters, finally dropping his hands to his sides. 

“But I don’t under – I was just _there._ It was over, we fixed it!”

Richie shrugs. His shoulders feel heavy. “We sort of did? It just isn’t sticking.”

Eddie presses his lips together – a very _Eddie_ gesture, although not quite similar enough that Richie can conveniently superimpose his Eddie of choice over the one he’s got. The way Boomer Eddie looks at him makes Richie suspect he may be trying to do the same with him. Force the magic to happen again through sheer force of will, like forcing two mismatched puzzle pieces together.

Well, _this_ mismatched jigsaw piece isn’t going to sit around waiting for his match to come to him. He may have lost Eddie two – three times now, but this is obviously a dangling carrot. All they need to do is… snap the stick the carrot’s swinging from, or something. And stop dwelling on bad metaphors – that’s really Bill’s territory, anyway.

“We’ll make a list,” Eddie decides, back on his feet and impatiently scanning Richie’s room until his gaze lands on the pathetic sliver of a notepad left behind by some particularly forgetful past guest. “Two lists. And then we’ll compare notes.”

“Same deal? I show you mine, you show me yours?”

“What?” Eddie says, not looking Richie’s way as he snatches up the notepad with a frenzied intensity. 

Richie’s face heats up. He hurriedly puts some distance between himself and the bed, although there’s really nowhere else to sit. What ever happened to furnishing hotel rooms with unpleasantly slippery, stiff-cushioned armchairs? 

“You know, story for a story? One-to-one embarrassing memory exchange rate?”

Eddie turns back to him, lips slightly parted, as if he’s about to speak. After a moment the tense lines of his forehead relax, and he offers Richie a paper-thin smile.

“Sure, Rich,” he says. “Maybe that’ll… well. We can figure it out.”

Richie’s stomach dips like he’s just come within an inch of falling off a tightrope. “Sounds…” He fumbles for an adjective – _ominous,_ for one, only slightly more inspiring than it’s been lately by virtue of their near miss… and, of course, _‘You_ sound just enough like him to make me wish you sounded _more_ like him’ – “Like, uh… like a plan!”

Eds wouldn’t buy his manic-verging-on-deranged smile for a second, and Richie suspects that this Eddie doesn’t, either – he’s just too polite to point it out.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Clownniversary everyone! It's been a literal year since Chapter Two was released and 84 years since our last update!

_ Maybe it’ll work again if you wear your shitty sewer clothes, Eddie, _ they say, and then of course it doesn’t, and Eddie can’t clear the lingering stench from his nostrils even after several minutes of scrubbing and glaring at the most useless magic mirror anyone’s ever had to rely on.

He wants his fleeting window of opportunity back. He wants to talk to Richie, and he wants to be back outside, where it’s at least easier to tell himself that  _ trees _ are the same everywhere. Easier to imagine he’s in his Derry when all he can see is grass and normal-looking birds that only Stan could’ve identified. Maybe they’re not as normal as they look. Maybe Stan would have taken one look at these alt-1990s birds and recoiled in horror.

Luckily, Eddie’s bird knowledge is limited mainly to telling them apart from bats in flight, and he only knows  _ that  _ because Stan once pointed out all the little differences in an attempt to get him to stop worrying about being dive-bombed by rabid flying things when they all stayed out late in the summer.

He doesn’t know enough to be horrified by anomalous birds, or trees or anything that isn’t obviously radioactively mutated – and he hasn’t seen any evidence of that yet, so he jumps on Mike’s suggestion that they try more outdoor spots.

On the condition that he  _ take it easy,  _ seconded vocally by Bill and Audra. 

Talking childhood memories, especially the fondest ones, the rough-and-tumble dirty summer day ones, means plenty more than the quarry, dams and an underground clubhouse. It’s sort of nonspecific, but they settle on climbing trees. Because what kid growing up in any small town pre-ubiquitous Internet access  _ didn’t  _ know all the best spots for that?

Particularly in the immediate aftermath of fighting-and-seemingly-defeating Pennywise, the best spots for Eddie’s Losers were generally as far away from Neibolt and sewer pipes as they could get. It was just a happy coincidence that Richie’s neighborhood had some of the best trees. Mostly that was because they had sturdy branches, some within easy reach and others extending far enough up to still pose a challenge – but there was one in particular that Eddie and Richie used to dare each other over, and to get up to that one you had to bring something to stand on. ‘Til Richie shot up like a tree, himself, but by then they’d mostly moved on from fantasizing about elaborate treehouses.

(Ben always claimed he wasn’t nearly at a point yet where he could manage anything like what they used to talk about, but Richie never shut up about the time he caught him with a book on “arboreal architecture.”)

Eddie leaves it up to his companions to debate the relative merits of this Derry’s various trees and the inaccuracies of old, naturally fading memories. He’s got plenty to think about without needing to dwell on another attempt that somehow already feels like one in a long line of similar failures.

He wonders if anyone is going to ask how he knew to have Bill kiss his wife awake from the Deadlights, because he wonders if anyone thinks he woke his Richie up like that.

He wonders if he’d meant to, as an inevitable result of following the impulse to put his hands on him after he hit the ground. If Richie hadn’t focused on him, blinked and pulled them both out of harm’s way…

Before he realizes what he’s doing, the tips of his fingers press against his lips with just enough force to whiten the skin. He remembers that the last thing they touched was a set of clothes now  _ extra-permanently  _ residing in a trash bin and yanks them away with a sharp frown.

“You don’t seem too on board with this.”

Eddie shakes his head at Richie, who’s apparently already excused himself from the brainstorming circle. Looks like it’s starting to wind down, anyway. Mike looks so comfortable in his armchair, Eddie is tempted to rethink the plan to have him tag along. He’d make a case for it, in fact, if he didn’t think it might hurt his feelings.

“And you are?”

“Hey, I’ll try anything half a dozen times,” Richie says. Eddie can’t tell if he’s trying to be quiet; at least a searching glance over Richie’s shoulder reveals none of the rest of their group glaring at them for the unhelpful pessimism. “Love the feeling of bashing my head against a brick wall.”

“It’s emotionally significant, I guess,” Eddie tries, but the optimism falls a little flat. “It’s just not on par with… this morning,” he sighs, hoping he doesn’t come off as too dismissive. He’s feeling anything but.

“You think someone on the other end of the line was sharing a secret or two of their own?”

Eddie pretends the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “Who, though?”

“Spaghetti, I guess,” Richie says, like it’s obvious, and Eddie isn’t even surprised, really. But shouldn’t he be? 

“Huh. Just – just him?” His voice comes out weird, nervously high-pitched. He does  _ not  _ like the way this Richie looks at him, then, but he likes his vague, unhelpful answer even less.

“I mean, yeah, unless you have some alt-Richie facts you’re not sharing with the class.” 

“I wouldn’t be asking  _ you  _ if I did,” Eddie says. It might be the first time since he’s gotten here that he’s wished his words had come out sounding  _ more  _ venomous. He’s thinking a  _ lot  _ about Richie now. About the way he talks himself into holes and corners and never seems to be able to stop. “But isn’t it weird? It isn’t like  _ everyone’s  _ – you know, gay, in this universe. Ben and Bev aren’t, and Bill isn’t, and it’s kind of an important part of what makes us  _ us.  _ Our jobs aren’t even that different, except for  _ me…” _

Richie looks like he’s having a hard time following Eddie’s logic, which is his first mistake – assuming Eddie has anything that organized going on in his head right now. “And therefore because you’re an insurance salesman we can assume you’re straight?”

“Risk analyst,” Eddie corrects automatically. “That’s below my pay grade, dick.”

“Mine, too,” Richie says, infuriatingly smarmy. “So, gonna tell me what I should be assuming?”

_ Tit for tat,  _ the familiar Richie in the back of Eddie’s mind whispers.

“There’s nothing to tell,” he says to both of them. But not to himself;  _ that _ guy’s not so sure at the moment, and he doesn’t like feeling like a liar about it.

This Derry’s best climbing trees are nowhere near any of the Losers’ childhood homes, and it doesn’t track very well onto Eddie’s internal map of Derry As He Knows It.

He can’t muster enough enthusiasm to get his hopes up – or enough of a sixth sense; he’s never laid a hand on any of these trees, after all, never skinned his knees on their bark or tried to catch a friend losing their grip on these branches, so how the hell should he know which one to focus his…  _ pining  _ on? 

Ugh. Either Richie would have loved to hear him say that aloud.

By some unspoken agreement, the party leaves the specifics of tree selection up to this world’s Richie. Eddie follows him through a slow circuit of a particularly overgrown little grove of trees.

“This would have made a nice clubhouse,” Beverly comments. She’s looking at Ben, but Eddie nods to himself, anyway. All it would have taken was a lot of hauled-in brush, scrap lumber and whatever else they could scrounge to fill the gaps between the trunks. In his Derry, there was always discarded, bug-eaten wood littered around sections of the tracks that passed through town. Here, who even knows?

“Watch out for snakes,” Mike advises. Eddie barely has time to misidentify a gnarled tree root as a threat before Richie drops to the ground with a loud “Ah!” that makes Eddie’s skin feel like it’s about to jolt into the surrounding greenery without him. 

The alarm passes quickly. “You o-okay?” Bill asks.

They gather around Richie’s find, Eddie glaring every step of the way until he sees the pair of disparate carvings in the wood near ground-level. 

_ ‘TRIED FAIR NOT WKING – DINNER?’ _

The T in “NOT” is hastily scratched in above what once was part of a W. Any one of Eddie’s Losers could have carved that, but only Richie – his Richie – could have left behind the second set of words. It’s in all caps, too – fewer curved lines that way, Eddie’s had unexpected occasion to learn lately – but it reads quieter. The fresh cuts in the wood aren’t as deep as they are in the one above it. They’re messier, too, rushed maybe.

_ ‘MISS YOU 2, EDS’ _

It’s no “Richie wuz here.” He didn’t carve a dick into the wood. But Eddie’s heart constricts around the nickname and refuses to let go.

He must be thinking about all two, max three of the sentences Eddie managed to say to his face. Knowing that the ache of being homesick and… personsick, Eddie guesses – knowing it’s reciprocated shouldn’t be so reassuring. Eddie reaches past Richie and Bill’s shoulders to trace the words with the nail of his pointer finger. Magic like that should feel like something, but to his hand it just feels like a splinter waiting to happen.

“I guess it should say ‘just missed you,’” Ben comments.

Eddie sighs. He could be standing on the same patch of alternate-dimension earth as Richie right this second and he would be none the wiser. 

“Do us a favor and decipher this one, wouldja?” 

Richie directs that question at Eddie without sparing a glance in his direction. Eddie wonders, again, if he’d actually prefer Eddie’s insight into his other self’s postscript, but he answers with a question that has nothing whatsoever to do with that.

“Is there a fairgrounds around here?”

“There is,” Mike replies. He’s putting a concerningly obvious portion of his weight on Audra, who looks more than a little disappointed when he qualifies the statement – “But we’re about a month too early for there to be anything happening there.”

“Shall we try anyway?” Audra offers.

“I don’t mind, but if any ghostly circuses pop up there, I don’t plan on sticking around to look for clues,” Ben says.

“I don’t see the point,” Eddie sighs around an involuntary smile. “They’re already done there and nothing happened, so…”

That is, of course, unless time is working a lot less linearly than they’ve been assuming, but that’s a rabbit hole he’s not sure he wants to go down – and besides, he has a feeling, which supposedly is what they’re supposed to be going on. A big, dried-up patch of trampled grass and dust isn’t going to make him feel any closer to Richie than he already does, kneeling in the same snake-infested dirt he did. 

“Dinner?” Bill suggests. He brushes last season’s leafy detritus from his knees on his way to support Mike’s other side. “It’s… early, but”—

“Maybe they meant ‘quittin’ time, let’s reconvene over dinner?’” Richie gives the tree a decisive pat and straightens to look at Eddie. “You got anything?”

“Ugh. Library? School? Break into some random people’s houses?” He laughs dryly when Richie does; maybe they should just reenact a slumber party – setting aside the fact that no one, except maybe Ben, would have ever  _ called  _ them that – and see if anyone wakes up in the middle of the night in another room, with another Eddie or another Richie. “That would be”— _ nice,  _ he thinks at the mental image of his Richie propped up on a neck-destroyingly mammoth pile of pillows. 

“Uh,” he corrects. “I don’t think they meant we should just cool our heels for hours. There is  _ literally  _ nothing to do here but try to leave.”

“On  _ that,  _ I think we can all agree, am I right, fellas?” Eddie refrains from any further tree-fondling before he lets Richie haul him back to his feet. Richie does a double-take, but not at Eddie for his uncharacteristic cooperativeness. “Don’t you wanna send something back?”

Eddie follows his gaze to the patch of prime real estate beside Richie’s message. If he did scratch something in, the words would span the trunk’s entire circumference. Like magic runes in an old video game, video store fantasy flick, the stuff of Mike’s books. 

“I can sacrifice another pen,” Bev offers. She’s already rifling through her purse, but Eddie shakes his head. He’s tempted to draw a dick for a laugh, on the off chance Richie might see it. It’s just that there are better ways to ask someone not to stop missing you until they’ve got you back, and he doesn’t know any magic spells.

Well. He does know one, in the grand tradition of broken fairy-tale curses, but there’s no convenient, pre-established fairy-tale method for exchanging kisses across dimensions.

-*-

Eddie is wearing the denim jacket he wore in the sewers. It’s been laundered; Ben washed it this morning while they were all trying to come up with things to do. (The fact that without Eddie and Richie to guide them, the group had floundered enough to just  _ go do the laundry _ does bring Eddie some small amusement.) The idea of wearing the same clothes emerged, and Eddie tried it, and it did nothing, as he had expected. But the jacket is  _ his _ , and it’s comforting, and in Maine, in the late summer, a cool breeze starts up in the afternoons. 

It’s not that late yet, but they’ll probably be out a while. They’re at the Canal Days Festival, because this is Derry and that’s the sort of thing that passes for entertainment around here. Eddie remembers fairs and festivals and street parties – Hell, he remembers them pretty fondly, because he’d never really been a _ llowed _ to go to them, he just went anyway. There’s something about the smell of dirt and metal, about the concessions-scent of sickly-sweet lemonade and cheap hot dogs – it’s enticing, even now. He doesn’t exactly get many chances to go to places like this nowadays. Maybe if he dated, he would, but of course Eddie Kaspbrak does not date. 

“I feel like I should put a leash on you,” Richie is saying. Eddie does  _ try _ to listen to him, but he talks a  _ lot _ and his voice isn’t the Richie-Voice Eddie is used to. He barely even does impressions! 

“Ew, Richie,” Beverly says, and Richie squeaks.

“Not in a weird way! Get your mind out of the gutter! I just wanna know if he pops back into that other dimension again…” 

Richie turns and looks at him, directly at him, and Eddie holds his gaze easily. 

“I’m sure you’d notice pretty quick,” Eddie says, letting one side of his mouth quirk up into a smile. 

Richie smiles back. “I don’t know,” he says. “I might be getting used to having you around.”

They’re both getting used to each other, really, the way anyone stuck together in an unpleasant situation must get used to one another. It’s the same way the Losers’ Club blossomed the first time around, after all. This Richie is kind, and there’s a gentleness and a shyness to the slump of his shoulders, and Eddie feels – really he does – quite fond of him. Of this stranger from another land, another past, another dimension, who he hopes very much is his lifeline home.

Because this sure is different from the Derry that he remembers. This is not the same festival that Eddie recalls from his childhood, but he thinks that maybe it’s more than that – he’s just, he’s a grown-up now, and things aren’t the same. Rides seem smaller but the crowd seems bigger, more threatening. He can see hints of things his mother has always warned him about – bored operators; creaky old tech; accidents waiting to happen. And sure, there’s some part of Eddie’s brain that’s thinking about that, that’s weighing the odds – but there’s also a part focused, as always, on his friends. And they’re all focused in turn on their environment, on high-alert for any dimension-hopping Eddies. Eddie, in his own displaced state, feels he may as well try to do the same. 

And besides, it’s odd. For Eddie, the fair is a trip down memory lane that he doesn’t actually think will work – unless time is weirder than he’s imagining, there’s not a fair going on in _ his _ Derry – but it’s pleasant enough.

Apparently, though, this is true for Eddie and Eddie only. Ben and Beverly are looking uncomfortable, tense and quiet, and Mike and Bill keep talking in undertones. Richie is doing a half-decent job of pretending to be fine, until he sees a wandering performer dressed as a clown and looks near-instantly physically ill. 

“Man, fuck this,” he says, and Beverly groans. 

“Agreed.” 

Eddie’s been trying to act appropriately morose, but he can’t help it, and he laughs a little. 

“It was just a clown!”

“You almost got murdered by a clown like, a couple of days ago, dude, how are you this chill about it?” Richie turns to look at him, his eyes wide and lopsided under the thick frames. Eddie doesn’t know why this Rich never switched to contact lenses, but he likes it. It makes even this man, so different in so many ways, look familiar to him.

Eddie smiles at him, and raises a finger in the air. “No, I was almost murdered by an alien spider-being  _ pretending _ to be a clown, it’s different.” He shrugs a little. “Besides, I’m pretty sure It was a one-off thing. Or at least I fucking hope so.” 

Richie’s eyebrows make a hopeless attempt at his hairline. “I – uh. Okay. You know? I’m not gonna – I’m not gonna question all that. You’re just a badass, fine, but lil ol’ Richie is –”

“Sorry,” Mike says, appearing suddenly in Eddie’s peripheral and looking very intense, “It’s just that every time you talk about Pennywise you reference some things, and I would love to –” 

“Mikeeey,” Richie groans. “Eddie, don’t encourage him. I’m gonna go get snacks.” 

Mike subsides, though his brows remain furrowed in thought. Ben follows after Richie’s retreating back – apparently eager to avoid the clown as well – and Eddie is left giving awkward smiles to the remaining Losers, who are pretty busy staring at him.

“I need a cig,” Beverly says after an excruciating thirty seconds, hands on her hips. When Eddie takes the time to look at her more closely, he sees how tired she looks, the lines under her eyes stark. This situation isn’t only weighing on him, it seems. She smiles at him, though, regardless.

“Guess you probably don’t smoke, huh,” she says. 

“No.” 

And it’s true, he doesn’t. Eddie Kaspbrak has smoked exactly one cigarette in his life, given to him by a handsome college boy in his accounting class. It’s just one of the many missed chances he’s found himself thinking so much of since he made his not-so-triumphant return to Derry. For a dizzying second, Eddie almost asks if Bev has any on her, if she’d let him cop a smoke. He doesn’t, though.

Instead, there’s a weighty silence between them, for a moment. Then as if on cue, Richie and Ben sweep back in. 

“Mikey,” Richie says, looking like an overworked waiter with his desserts balancing act. “Grab the cotton candy please  _ please _ –” his dramatics make Mike laugh, and some of the stress lines smooth out on his face.

“It’s big, share with Billiam,” Richie orders, and Mike smiles as he turns to Bill, trying again to distract the other man from whatever it is that Eddie doesn’t know about but that makes it hard for him to be here. 

“Is that a funnel cake?” Beverly sounds delighted, and Eddie watches her face crease into a smile, too. She puts her arm on Ben’s waist, briefly, gently, before tugging some of the fried sugar-coated treat off and popping it into her mouth. 

“God,” she says, mouth still full. “Ben, you’re the best.” 

Ben’s face is flushed, but he’s smiling too. Eddie’s not a fool, he’s well aware of what he’s feeling now, and he knows he’s got to admit that it’s the same thing that made his chest hurt watching them yesterday. He’s jealous. He’s happy for them, too, of course he is, but – he wants that. He wants the ease of their touch, the softness of their smiles, the sweetness of their laughter. And the thing is, he had it – or something like it – with Richie, his Richie, when he saw him again. He’s aware of what that means for him, but he’s not quite sure what it means for Richie. 

He’s thought about it before, of course. As soon as he saw him again, in his overgrown, too-loud glory. About Richie, and men. And after what the Richie of 2016 has told him…

Eddie looks up, and there he is. Richie, watching him with a gentleness on his face, waiting for Eddie. Always waiting. 

Eddie swallows, and blinks, and presses his nails into the flesh of his palms. 

“What did you get, Richie?” He says. “You still have your sweet tooth?” 

“Hells yeah,” Richie says, and Eddie realizes that there’s two ice cream cones left in Richie’s hands, and only one is chocolate-dipped.

“Uh,” Richie says, and there it is, the not-so-secret shyness that appears sometimes when he’s talking to or about Eddie. “I got this...for you? For the...other you...I got excited, I wasn’t thinking – am I making this weird?”

“Richie,” Eddie says, and takes the ice cream cone – carefully wrapped in a little napkin – from Richie’s hand. “I like ice cream. Everyone likes ice cream. Thank you.” 

“Not  _ everyone. _ You could be lactose intolerant.” 

“Well, I’m not.” 

“Okay,” Richie says. “Good. I also got? A bottle of water?” He gestures; it’s shoved into one of his jacket pockets. “Because ice cream...makes you thirsty.” 

“It does,” Eddie says, amused, and then licks the top of his ice cream in an attempt to put Richie out of his misery. It works, at least in that Richie grimaces and bites the top of his chocolate right off. 

“As thrilling as this all is,” Beverly says, and Eddie turns to see her watching them both with a skeptical eyebrow. “Don’t get me wrong, the funnel cake is worth it – but as far as swapping our Eddies goes…” 

“There’s no sign of him,” Mike says. He sighs. “You’re right, Bev. I was hoping there might be something odd with the timelines, but maybe not. I guess this sort of thing doesn’t play by any rules. Or at least not ones humans can understand.” 

“Rules are made to be broken,” Richie quips. He brandishes his elbow at another of many signs listing the dos and don’ts of this Derry’s yearly carnival. “Apparently not here, though, they’ve got ‘em posted on every vertical surface in this place.” He swallows, maybe considering, as Eddie briefly does, the possibility of a little light vandalism – for the sake of sending a message, of course. He must reject it just as quickly, though, because all he follows it up with is, “So, like, eat as we walk? Let’s get the hell out of here?” 

As they start down the path, one of the performers ambles in their direction, prompting an exaggerated gagging face from Richie. Beverly laughs, her powdered sugar-spotted hand covering her mouth, and maybe that draws the attention of the man, because he perks up and actually approaches them. 

“My, some awfully big kids you are!” The clown says, and Eddie rolls his eyes. He’s doing a weird, affected voice that sounds even more awkward than some of Richie’s Voices that he remembers from childhood, and that’s saying something. 

“Not too big for fun, right?” The clown brandishes a long balloon at Ben, who visibility flinches. Can this guy not take a  _ hint? _

“Look, we’re leaving, we don’t want any balloons, man, we’re good,” Richie says, stepping forward beside Ben. The remnants of his ice cream are melting over his hand, and he’s leveling a proper glare at the performer.

“Not even one for the road?” The balloon is pointed at Richie, now. “And – hey. Don’t I know you from somewhere?” 

That’s Eddie’s last straw. He steps neatly in-between Richie and the clown, and takes the proffered balloon in one hand. 

“We’ve already said we’re not interested. Don’t you have children to annoy?”

“No, like – he’s famous, man, shit, can I –” He’s dropped the affected clown-speak, and his real voice is actually even more annoying, making him sound like every macho try-hard in the world. 

“Anyone ever teach you that it’s rude to bother strangers?” Eddie says, trying to keep his voice even. 

“He’s not a stranger! That’s Rich Tozier!” 

The idea that this idiot wearing a poorly-styled wig thinks he  _ knows _ Richie, that he has some sort of _ claim _ to Richie, is too damn much. Eddie squeezes the balloon in his hand until it bursts with a POP, causing the clown – and he’s pretty sure all of the Losers, too – to jump. 

“You don’t know him,” Eddie says, “And we’re leaving.  _ Back off. _ ”

The man does, looking baffled and also kind of angry, so Eddie steps past him quickly. His heart-rate is up, and he’s not about to start wheezing in front of this jackass. The Losers follow, until they’re past the main attractions of the fair, now seeing only the backs of tents and scuffed earth. 

“Damn, Eds,” Richie says, sounding amused and delighted. “You just – knight-in-shining-armored us from that guy.” 

“He was – annoying,” Eddie says, pressing a hand to his collarbone and trying to keep his breathing even. He mostly succeeds, although he can feel a headache starting to curl around his temple and frowns to himself. 

“You were ready to wreck his shit!” Richie laughs, and with his laughter, the remaining tension seems to seep out of the air between them. 

“I think that’s the exit,” Mike says, pointing, and they start that way again.

“Turnabout is fair play, Richie,” Eddie says, quietly, when he catches his breath. “When I was a kid, you looked out for me. Guess it was my turn.”

“Looked out for you?” Richie says, soft. “Maybe your guy. Not me.” 

And there it is again, that bittersweet bashfulness. It’s strange, uncharacteristic. Life taught Richie to hold back in this way, and Eddie doesn’t like that. If he’s ever wanted his Richie to quiet down a bit – and to be fair, he has – he’s never meant it like this. Richie is loud and boastful and self-deprecating and he doesn’t like it when you look at him for too long. On some innate level, that doesn’t feel  _ right.  _

Eddie does look at him, but not for very long at all. He’s not the best at maintaining eye contact himself, never has been. But he sees enough to think that maybe Richie needs someone else to do the talking for a bit. He glances around; the other Losers are ahead of them, either to give them space or maybe just focusing on getting Bill away from the fairgrounds. Either way, there’s a little bit of privacy. Maybe not as much privacy as Richie would prefer, but Eddie’s had years and years of dipping out of his mother’s earshot and he’s used to stolen moments. 

“Yeah,” he says, conversationally, gently. “My guy, right. We’ve talked about the theater, we know it was important to both of us, yeah? I keep thinking of this one time, since we remembered...this was that summer. It’s weird right? Everything was so terrifying, but we were still kids...”

Richie chuckles, but when Eddie glances over at him again he mostly looks thoughtful. 

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s – I remember laughing so much, which is crazy, right? But we were just kids, like you said. And, I mean – I don’t know. The Losers’ Club, right? We all found each other. Bunch of young idiots, but…”

“Exactly,” Eddie says. “So that’s what this was. It was before Mike, but it was all the rest of us – watching an old horror flick. Ben was practically vibrating from how excited he was to comfort Beverly, should she need it –” 

“Ha! Bet she didn’t!” 

“Not really, no.” Eddie smiles at the memory. Beverly had been scared, but she’d been so  _ easy _ in her fear, unashamed. It was Eddie who was twitchy and tense with it. “But I guess that I sort of did. I wasn’t scared, not really, but – I was a little too into it. I was  _ stressed _ – and I knocked over my popcorn. Which wouldn’t have mattered except for who was sitting directly beneath said popcorn.”

Richie gasps performatively. “Oh shit! Not –?”

“Henry Bowers and company? Yeah, it was them in all their glory. When they turned around, I was more scared than when I first saw the clown. I thought they were gonna kill me.” 

“They probably would’ve tried.” 

“Definitely! But Richie was there too, and the thing about Richie is, he’s an idiot who doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.” 

“Fuck!” Richie says, laughing. He bumps his shoulder against Eddie’s as they walk, light enough to be accidental. 

“I’m not talking about you, right?” 

“Right, of course!” In front of them, the other Losers are still trailing off, the line of all of them stretching longer and longer as Bill and Mike pull ahead while Beverly points something out to Ben and they linger, her hand on his forearm. 

“Richie made some awful little gag – I don’t remember exactly what, but I’m sure it was rude – and spilled his soda all over them. It was big, dramatic, loud – and very, very obvious who had done it.” 

“Ah,” Richie said. “He took the fall for you. Brave man.” 

“He is, yeah.” Richie had always pulled attention; he couldn’t help it, but he could help what he did with it. “And anyway, it was fine – we all ran away together, and Bowers didn’t catch us. But I thought – well. I was really impressed by that.”

“Course you were,” Richie says. “It’s – a grand gesture.” 

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “One that was appreciated.” He wants to say more than that, but he doesn’t want to scare Richie off, either. He’s not quite sure how to balance it. 

“I don’t think I ever did anything that… impressive,” Richie says, pulling a little ahead in his stride. “Kind of wish I had. Bet you miss him.”

Eddie feels his eyebrows raise without him even thinking it. “About as much as you miss  _ him _ , I’d bet.” 

Richie doesn’t say anything to that, and the look that he throws Eddie’s way has some lingering nervousness. The quiet that falls between them isn’t as tense as it once would have been, though; both of them lost in thoughts of other men and other times.

And so after their not-so-dramatic escape from the festival, the Losers arrive at the best climbing trees that Derry, Maine can offer, because where else are they really gonna go?

“They better get this shit,” Richie says, the tip of his blade digging into the bark. “Recreating our shared dinner disasters is about all I can think of.” 

Eddie laughs. “It wasn’t  _ that _ bad.” The other Losers are standing a ways off, and even Eddie is keeping a little bit of distance. His glasses are hanging from his shirt pocket, because he’s not sure subtlety works on any Richie, let alone this one, and he wants Richie to feel able to carve whatever he thinks will work into the tree in front of them.

“It was pretty fuckin’ bad, dude!” Richie grins at him, and it’s only a little forced, so maybe the distancing is working. “Like, ‘you might need to go in alone’ bad.” 

Eddie sighs. Yet another trial to be faced in this foreign Derry. “I’m sure we’ll manage,” he says, and the small superstitious part of him hopes dearly that he didn’t just jinx them.

And that’s how Eddie Kaspbrak, born 1950, age 39 and somehow-simultaneously 65 – ends up behind the counter of a restaurant called Jade of the Orient. If anyone wants to convince him that’s a particularly better name than Chop Suey Kitchen, they’ll have their work cut out for them. 

“Party of seven?” The pretty waitress says, her dyed-blonde hair falling over her shoulder in waves. She’s making eyes at him, curious and unfettered. 

“Yes,” Eddie says, looking at her shoulders, mostly. He’s never quite sure what to do with women flirting with him ( – or men flirting with him, obviously, but that’s got its own host of problems –) and mostly ignores it by pretending to be oblivious. Which probably tells women all they need to know, actually. “Under Kaspbrak?”

“Of course,” she says, with the false customer-service cheer back in place. “I have you right here. Follow me?” 

The rest of the Losers follow behind him like cowed pack animals, having sent Eddie on ahead by himself at first, out of what Eddie feels is probably an abundance of caution. It’s a nice large table, like Mike had reserved for them in his own universe, but it feels a little – well, a lot – more tense in this dimension. 

“Look,” Eddie says, awkwardly, because apparently it’s become his job to diffuse all this tension. “It’s fine. It’s – whatever happened before, it was Pennywise’s fault, right?” 

“Yeah,” Richie says. “You guys hear that? 100% the clown! The fact that the VIP room of this joint is definitely absolutely closed to us is like, coincidental.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Okay, whatever. Just don’t do what you did last time, and we’ll be fine.” 

“So, no fortune cookies, I think,” Beverly says, darkly.

“You too?”

“Oh great, of course  _ that’s _ the same across universes, all the fucked-up shit –” 

“Beep-beep, Richie,” Mike says, gently, and they all fall into a silence that’s only mildly uneasy. 

“I’m gonna use the restroom,” Eddie says softly to Richie, and makes a break for it. Once safely inside, he stares at himself in the mirror as he shakes some aspirin into his palm. He’s done a lot of staring into mirrors over the past few days, and the same tired man from before looks back at him. He feels a sharp spike of frustration at this absurd situation, and at his own helplessness in it. He just wants to rest; he wants time to be still and take stock of the broken pieces of his life. He’s finally ready to do it, to leave, to be free of his mother, and he’s not in the same  _ dimensional zone _ as she is.

He scowls at the mirror and leaves, but as he’s stalking back to their table, he glances up and sees – Richie.

He sees Richie, his Richie, walking towards him down the hallway, face pulled tight with clear tension, one hand in his hair. He sees the glint of lights reflecting off of the bulky ring Richie wears, the lines of the dark windbreaker draping over his shoulders. And then, Richie looks a little to the left, and they see each other. 

Richie opens his mouth, but Eddie knows there’s not going to be enough time for him to say anything, and he thinks maybe Richie knows that, too, because Richie doesn’t even seem to try at speech. He simply looks at Eddie, and Eddie feels pierced by his gaze. Richie looks as tired as Eddie feels, and Eddie feels exhausted. 

And then, of course, Richie is gone. Eddie stands in the hallway for a long moment, rubbing his temple and hoping that the pills kick in soon. He doesn’t feel like eating, and he doesn’t feel like making small talk with people that he didn’t grow up with and doesn’t  _ really _ know. But that’s all he can do right now, so he sighs a little and makes his way back to the table. 

-*-

Eddie doesn’t know where or when it happened, exactly, but at some point it faded somewhat – that is, his certainty that he’s only being allowed an intimate look into his new acquaintances’ oldest and dearest memories for the sake of their missing friend.

There’s no getting around the fact that circumstances have put them all on a bullet-train fast track to getting to know each other, but if it had been anyone else – anyone but the Losers, however different they may be – Eddie doesn’t think a little turbulence would have been the worst of it. He  _ definitely  _ wouldn’t be able to stand the long and unproductive tour they take through vintage Derry, an exploration he might have enjoyed more under normal circumstances but that only makes him want to walk down his own memory lane in person the longer it goes on.

Nothing works, but Eddie is skeptical about their last stop for entirely different reasons.

“Will they even let us back in here?” he asks the others’ backs. Beverly pauses with her hand on the door handle. Eddie doesn’t like the red glow the neon “Chop Suey” sign casts over it. Or the smell of the food cooking inside. He thinks they should still be able to do better than recent,  _ extremely fucking negative  _ emotional associations. He’s this antsy, and he’s never even technically  _ been  _ to this restaurant. 

So, with probably-obvious reluctance, he spreads his palms face-up between himself and the door and says, “Shouldn’t  _ I  _ be the one asking for a table, they won’t recognize  _ me.” _

“Wh… why wouldn’t they let us in?” Bill asks.

“We were just a little weird,” Richie chimes in. “It’s Derry, for crying out loud.”

Eddie blinks, his brow furrowing. “Using a chair to beat the shit out of the dinner table is just a little weird?”

Mike’s vague look of confusion deepens into a frown and a bemused half-smile. “…That sounds pretty out of character, at least for any of us. Did something like that really happen in your Derry?”

Eddie’s brain fries itself trying to work out a response to  _ that  _ absolute gem. There isn’t enough juice left in it to justify wasting the effort it would take to shake Richie off when he comes around and amicably drags Eddie through the swinging doors, past an incongruous crystal chandelier and into this restaurant’s version of a VIP room.

The long, rectangular table at the center of it is conspicuously unsmashed. There’s no gigantic fish tank, which means no floating zombie heads, so that’s a plus. The wood panel carvings are a lot more ornate here, too, and there’s even a couch. 

By the time Eddie’s finished cataloguing all the differences, he finds he’s relaxed enough to take a sip from the glass Audra passes him without bothering to ask what it is. 

Whiskey, probably. Beyond that, Eddie has no idea, but he has to wonder how either Richie can stand to drink so much of it. A few sips in, the best thing about it is how the slight burn numbs his taste buds to the battery acid taste. He sets it down and fumbles for a seat between Richie and the space beside Mike, into which Bill tries to nonchalantly force a chair from the other end of the table. Audra has to move the pre-set plates and silverware for both of them when she makes a spot for herself opposite Bill.

Their waitress, hair pulled into a neat bun so her wary smile stands out clearly against the backdrop of warm light and a sparse mid-week dinner crowd, comes by with a tray of drinks and a question.

“Your friend? Is he coming?”

All eyes fall on Eddie, who’s frozen with his glass of water halfway to his lips. It would have gone down wrong if he’d had a chance to actually drink it. Some sloshes onto the tablecloth, instead, and he says, “Uh! He’s – uh, he, he left.”

“He went to the fair,” Bev adds.

“In Bangor!” Richie exclaims in response to her baffled expression. Eddie doubts there’s any fair happening in Bangor, either, but given that the waitress looks more concerned about the possibility of them deciding to tell her the truth than she is about what said truth might be, specifically, the odds seem good she won’t bother looking too deeply into that lie.

That’s pretty par for the course in Derry. 

The pall that casts over their table makes Eddie’s stomach clench and his chest tighten. Rather than pore over the menu and then quiz the waitress on the entire contents of the kitchen, he listens to everyone else ordering and gestures loosely at Bev when his turn comes around. 

“I’ll have what she’s having.”

He settles back in his chair to wait and manages to forestall any comments on the out of character choice by asking, “So, how does she remember the other me well enough to ask about him?”

“I’ll bet she wants his number,” Ben jokes. He doesn’t appear to notice the dirty look Richie throws his way, but he definitely picks up on Eddie’s deepening frown. If he ever heard the Ben he knows make a crack like that, he’d eat his own shirt. “What?”

“We all must’ve been pretty hard to forget,” Mike says in his odd, undiluted Maine accent.

“Not as much as our other selves, apparently,” Bev says. She smiles at Eddie. “Maybe she’s just surprised he’s the only one who didn’t wanna come back.”

“Dinner wasn’t so bad,” Richie deflects.

Eddie raises both eyebrows at him. “Killer fortune cookies?”

Audra shoots Bill a bewildered look. Eddie hears him murmur something to her; she rolls her eyes and shakes her head at him and Mike.

“Well, that’s splendid,” she says.

Her voice is nearly drowned out by Richie’s. “Before that!”

“We had a good time,” Bill acknowledges, putting his elbows on the table. “What about you, Eddie?”

“‘Till Mike dropped the bomb on us,” Eddie says. Remembering that first look at Richie in all his unkempt, poorly-shaved six-something glory. He still thinks he must have been fishing for compliments, calling Ben hot like it mattered that Ben’s good looks were more obvious. Technically more obvious. In hindsight, it’s almost hard to blame him, for that much of his obnoxiousness at least; the reunion nervousness hadn’t dissipated  _ that  _ fast. They hadn’t shaken off the last of the awkwardness until…

He gives this Richie a closer look, sizing him up. He waits for him to take obvious, confused notice before leaning forward and adding, “I almost beat Richie in an arm-wrestling… thing.”

“Key word: almost,” Richie chortles.

“Best two out of three,” Eddie says, purposely letting it come out as half-explanation and half-challenge. This Richie doesn’t need to know that it was Eddie who insisted on best two out of three in the first place. He considers it an accomplishment that he won the second round against the fucking Sasquatch of New England.  _ Practically  _ a victory, and considering he’d definitely beat him in any race…

“Alright, you’re on.”

Accepting the hand Richie offers him after brushing their still-empty plates and Eddie’s unfinished whiskey out of the way is surprisingly anticlimactic. His pulse doesn’t jump to his throat and there’s no secret thrill in catching whiffs of alcohol on his opponent’s breath. If he weren’t determined to win, anyway, he’d close his eyes for the memory of Richie’s face stretched into a boastful grin, dimples, eyes all squinty behind cartoonishly big glasses frames – and just like that, he sees it.

If his Richie didn’t look surprised to see  _ him,  _ he’s definitely surprised when his raised, untensed hand gets slammed back into a bowl of rice and some soy sauce.

“Fuck,” he says, wide-eyed and oddly quiet for someone who might have just cut his hand on broken porcelain.

“Sorry,” Eddie gasps. There’s something soaking through the sleeve of his sweater, but he ignores that in lieu of lifting Richie’s hand in his to inspect the damage. There’s a little cut just beneath his knuckles, so shallow it’s more of a scrape, and barely bleeding. 

It’s crazy, but his first instinct is to raise it the rest of the way to his lips, to repeat his apology physically so Richie can’t possibly fail to understand it. To stop the bleeding, or taste it.

He stops short. Richie’s hand is shaking. He thinks,  _ I’ll crawl across this stupid fucking table and really go for broke. _ He thinks,  _ What the hell am I doing, trying to give him an infection? Or get one, _ he thinks,  _ you don’t just put your mouth on broken skin, you don’t treat minor wounds with mouth to mouth in the middle of a restaurant,  _ and somewhere between points A and B the hand in his stops being Richie’s, his Richie’s, and the eyes he’s staring into suddenly belong to another very alarmed man with a fuck-ugly windbreaker and a bad mustache. 

Eddie thinks he might throw up. He withdraws his hand reluctantly and finds his elbow and a good portion of his arm coated in reddish-brown chili sauce. A piece of chicken lands on the pristine tablecloth, the only speck of food on the entire table.

“I guess we know which restaurant has faster service,” Richie says. Eddie grimaces, eyes stinging, and keeps holding his arm away from himself until Bill uncertainly offers him a cloth napkin.

Eddie doesn’t take it. He pulls his arm back into the dirtied sleeve, carefully pushes the whole garment over his head and then folds the mess into the center of the bundle so that he can stuff it under his seat without doing any further damage. The restaurant feels suddenly cold without the extra layer.

“Are you okay?” Unexpectedly, the question comes from Audra, who sounds… incredulous. Mike has a steadying hand on her shoulder, she’s gripping Bill’s arm and they’re all staring at Eddie. Ben, Bev and Richie, too. It occurs to Eddie that he didn’t even notice whether or not  _ his  _ Ben, Bev, Bill and Mike saw him. Instant tunnel vision.

He goes to nod, panics and instead pushes his chair back with a sharp shake of his head.

“Back in a minute,” he says, forcing the words through half a lungful of air. 

On his way to the bathroom, he passes two of the waitstaff bearing too many plates of food for it not to be their order. He’s not even sure which plate is his; they all look equally unappetizing at the moment.

An older guy washing his hands in one of the sinks visibly jumps when Eddie yanks the bathroom door open. Eddie starts toward him but abruptly changes course for one of the unoccupied stalls; there’s not enough space at the short counter for Eddie to get the kind of privacy he needs, although the guy solves that problem for him by rushing out seconds after Eddie slams the stall door behind himself.

_ He probably thinks I have food poisoning.  _ Eddie’s breathing definitely makes him sound sick, like it always has when he gets like this. It takes him a lot longer than a minute to slow it down, and longer still to quit staring at his empty hands. Hunched over on the closed lid of the toilet, he makes repetitive fists of them, like he’s squeezing a stress toy. It helps.

His friends would have sent a representative after him by now – and it would have been Richie, Eddie decides, because he’s already being tortured, anyway. It would have been Richie, and Richie would have pretended he drew the short straw, lost rock paper scissors or just plain caved to the others’ silent guilt-tripping, even though it isn’t  _ really  _ his fault that Eddie feels like shit.

When they were kids, he probably would’ve crawled under the stall door and then made a big production of trying to wipe his disgusting toilet-floor hands on Eddie. Now, Eddie doesn’t know, but they’re adults, so maybe he’d settle for sieging Eddie’s stall and loudly informing anyone else who came in that he was just there as moral support. The jerk.

The sound of the door squeaking open knocks the smile off of Eddie’s face. He sits up a little straighter and has to fight down a fresh wave of disappointment when he recognizes the wrong voice.

“Eddie?” 

Richie sounds freaked out. Eddie might be an asshole for hoping that means he won’t notice how unsteady his answering “yeah” is.  _ Yeah? Is my breakdown taking too long? _

“Did you switch?” he says, demanding. “Just now. A second ago. After you left. Didn’t see  _ you,  _ but Spaghetti Man was”—

There’s no room in between explosive sentences for Eddie to respond, so he has to make one as he emerges from his embarrassing little hideout. “No, nothing – is he here?”

Nobody is lurking ominously over Richie’s shoulder, and it’s obvious that this Richie cares too disproportionately about his own Eddie to go looking for “Feddieccine” if the other guy were still around. Eddie wouldn’t exactly prioritize Caterpillar Man over his Richie, either. 

Caterpillar Man doesn’t answer because he doesn’t have to. Eddie dips into the sink for a quick hand-wash, just for argument’s sake, and as neutrally as possible asks, “Did he also almost break your hand on sight?”

“No,” Richie says, looking disarmed in the mirror. Eddie can almost pinpoint the moment he takes whatever thought he was debating voicing and crumples it into a little ball instead. “You know people usually come to restaurants to eat?”

“I thought we were here to time travel.” Eddie’s own reflection looks surprisingly put-together, a few stains that managed to reach his second layer of clothing notwithstanding. Dark undereye circles and barely the ghost of a smile, but he meets Richie’s eyes in the mirror and leads the way back to the table.

The fact that he spends more time picking at the contents of his plate than he does actually eating any of it likely doesn’t do much to support the calm and collected image he’s trying to cultivate. No one comments on it, except to ask their waitress to bring a to-go box – “And no fortune cookies, please,” Bill adds for everyone’s sake. By that point, the poor woman is so obviously weirded out by them that her relief at being spared any more trips to their table is almost tangible.

It isn’t until they’re outside and Eddie is  _ really  _ mourning the loss of the most tolerable sweater he had, fucking cold and trying not to dwell on the last time he loitered in the parking lot of a Derry Chinese restaurant, that Richie clears his throat and makes an announcement without looking at any of them.

“I know something we can try. First thing tomorrow. We’ll pack some, uh – Mike, you still got any of the stuff we took down to the sewers with us? Anyone?”

Everyone else is about as incredulous as Eddie. Bev says, “You’re not thinking of going back there, are you?”

Richie looks taken aback. “What? Jesus,  _ no,  _ but we’re gonna need flashlights. You’ll see, alright?” His tone puts a clear end to the discussion, no questions allowed. That’s… interesting. “And Eddie.”

Eddie meets his pointed look with a skeptical one. 

“I need to borrow your mirror.”


End file.
